And while he, head down, grabs at the meadows he passes, his mouth twisted to the side, a breakfast on the move, I make myself a third to two travellers who by chance had gone a little ahead.

Ientaculum ambulatorium, “a walking breakfast,” is a dining-room joke. The ientaculum was the first light meal of the day; Lewis & Short calls it “a breakfast, taken immediately after rising,” as against the prandium “towards noon.” Ambulatorius is a technical word, used of machines “which can be moved to and fro,” such as siege towers. The horse eats sideways as it walks, mouth “twisted to the side.” Close animal detail of this kind runs all through the book, and its hero will soon have to eat like this himself. Comes, from con and eo, is “one who goes with another.” Here it means a fellow traveller, someone who happens to be going the same way, and the novel will frame many of its inset tales just like this: two strangers on a road, one of them laughing at the other. Lucius joins.