This dinner to which the ambassadors of Valentinian were also invited took place in a large _salone_ furnished with little tables for four or five persons each, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Upon the threshold the ambassadors were offered cups of wine in which to drink the health of the King, who reclined in the midst before a table, on a couch set upon a platform or dais, so that he was set up above his guests; beside him but lower sat Ellak his heir, who dared not lift his eyes from the ground. Upon his right were Onegesius and two other sons of the King, upon his left were placed the ambassadors. When all were assembled Attila drank to Maximin who stood up to acknowledge his condescension and drank in return. A like ceremony was performed by all the ambassadors in turn. Then the feast was served upon plates and dishes of silver and the wine in cups of gold; only Attila ate and drank from wooden dishes and a wooden cup. Before each course the drinking ceremony of salutation was performed again, and as the banquet lasted well on into the darkness, when torches were lighted and Hunnish poets sang or chanted their verses in the Barbarian tongue celebrating the glories of war and victory to the delight of the assembly whose eyes shone with emotion, the young with tears of desire and the old with fright, few can have been sober when a buffoon and then the famous dwarf Zercan began to set the tables in a roar; though Attila remained grave and unmoved. So the days passed without anything being accomplished. The impatient ambassadors were compelled to attend a similar dinner given in their honour by the Queen Kerka, and again they dined with Attila; but nothing was discussed or decided. Several times, indeed, Attila spoke to Maximin of a matter he apparently had at heart, namely, the marriage of his secretary Constantius, who some years earlier had been sent to Constantinople, and whom Theodosius had promised a rich wife on condition that peace was not broken. The wife chosen, however, was spirited away and this had become a grievance, Attila being so enraged that he sent word to Theodosius that if he could not keep order in his own house, he, Attila, would come and help him. Of course Constantius was promised another and a richer heiress, and it was this matter that Attila preferred to discuss with Maximin rather than the letter he had brought from the Emperor.