“The Roman people, and thou, as one of them, and I,
Paullus Cæcilius, are slaves one and all; abject and base
and spirit-fallen slaves, lacking the courage even to spurn
against our fetters, to the proud tyrannous rich aristocracy.”

“By the Gods! we are of it.”

“But not the less, for that, slaves to it!” answered Cataline!
See! from the lowest to the highest, each petty
pelting officer lords it above the next below him; and if
the tribunes for a while, at rare and singular moments, uplift
a warning cry against the corrupt insolence of the patrician
houses, gold buys them back into vile treasonable
silence! Patricians be we, and not slaves, sayest thou?
Come tell me then, did the patrician blood of the grand
Gracchi preserve them from a shameful doom, because
they dared to speak, as free-born men, aloud and freely?
Did his patrician blood save Fulvius Flaccus? Were
Publius Antonius, and Cornelius Sylla, the less ejected
from their offices, that they were of the highest blood in
Rome; the lawful consuls by the suffrage of the people?
Was I, the heir of Sergius Silo's glory, the less forbidden
even to canvass for the consulship, that my great grandsire's
blood was poured out, like water, upon those fields
that witnessed Rome's extremest peril, Trebia, and the
Ticinus, and Thrasymene and Cannæ? Was Lentulus, the
noblest of the noble, patrician of the eldest houses, a consular
himself, expelled the less and stricken from the rolls
of the degenerate senate, for the mere whining of a mawkish
wench, because his name is Cornelius? Tush, Tush!
these be but dreams of poets, or imaginings of children!—
the commons be but slaves to the nobles; the nobles to
the senate; the senate to their creditors, their purchasers,
their consuls; the last at once their tools, and their tyrants!
Go, young man, go. Salute, cringe, fawn upon
your consul! Nathless, for thou hast mind enough to
mark and note the truth of what I tell thee; thou wilt
think upon this, and perchance one day, when the time
shall have come, wilt speak, act, strike, for freedom!”

And as he finished speaking, he turned aside with a
haughty gesture of farewell; and wrapping his toga closely
about his tall person, stalked away slowly in the direction
neither of the capitol nor of the consul's house;

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

turning his head neither to the right hand nor to the left; and
taking no more notice of the person to whom he had been
speaking, than if he had not known him to be there, and
gazing toward him half-bewildered in anxiety and wonder!

“Wonderful! by the Gods!” he said at last. “Truly
he is a wonderful man, and wise withal! I fain would
know if all that be true, which they say of him—his bitterness,
his impiety, his blood-thirstiness! By Hercules!
he speaks well! and it is true likewise. Yea! true it is,
that we, patricians, and free, as we style ourselves, may
not speak any thing, or act, against our order; no! nor
indulge our private pleasures, for fear of the proud censors!
Is this, then, freedom? True, we are lords abroad;
our fleets, our hosts, everywhere victorious; and not one
land, wherein the eagle has unfurled her pinion, but bows
before the majesty of Rome—but yet—is it, is it, indeed,
true, that we are but slaves, sovereign slaves, at home?”

The whole tenor of the young man's thoughts was altered
by the few words, let fall for that very purpose by
the arch traitor. Ever espying whom he might attach to
his party by operating on his passions, his prejudices, his
weakness, or his pride; a most sagacious judge of human
nature, reading the character of every man as it were in
a written book, Cataline had long before remarked young
Arvina. He had noted several points of his mental
constitution, which he considered liable to receive such
impressions as he would—his proneness to defer to the
thoughts of others, his want of energetic resolution, and
not least his generous indignation against every thing that
savored of cruelty or oppression. He had resolved to operate
on these, whenever he might find occasion; and
should he meet success in his first efforts, to stimulate his
passions, minister to his voluptuous pleasures, corrupt his
heart, and make him in the end, body and soul, his own.

Such were the intentions of the conspirator, when he
first addressed Paullus. His desire to increase the strength
of his party, to whom the accession of any member however
humble of the great house of Cæcilii could not
fail to be useful, alone prompting him in the first instance.
But, when he saw by the young man's startled
aspect that he was prepossessed against him, and had
listened probably to the damning rumors which were

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

rife everywhere concerning him, a second motive was
added, in his pride of seduction and sophistry, by which
he was wont to boast, that he could bewilder the strongest
minds, and work them to his will. When by the accidental
disarrangement of Arvina's gown, and the discovery
of his own dagger, he perceived that the intended
victim of his specious arts was probably cognizant in
some degree of his last night's crime, a third and stronger
cause was added, in the instinct of self-preservation. And
as soon as he found out that Paullus was bound for the
house of Cicero, he considered his life, in some sort,
staked upon the issue of his attempt on Arvina's principles.

No part could have been played with more skill, or
with greater knowledge of his character whom he addressed.
He said just enough to set him thinking, and
to give a bias and a colour to his thoughts, without giving
him reason to suspect that he had any interest in the
matter; and he had withdrawn himself in that careless
and half contemptuous manner, which naturally led the
young man to wish for a renewal of the subject.

And in fact Paul, while walking down the hill, toward
the house of the Consul, was busied in wondering why
Cataline had left so much unsaid, departing so abruptly;
and in debating with himself upon the strange doctrines
which he had then for the first time heard broached.

It was about the second hour of the Roman day, corresponding
nearly to eight o'clock before noon—as the
winter solstice was now passed—when Arvina reached
the magnificent dwelling of the Consul in the Carinæ at
the angle of the Cærolian place, hard by the foot of the
Sacred Way.

This splendid building occupied a whole insula, as it
was called, or space between four streets, intersecting
each other at right angles; and was three stories in
height, the two upper supported by columns of marble,
with a long range of glass windows, at that period an
unusual and expensive luxury. The doors stood wide
open; and on either hand the vestibule were arranged the
lictors leaning upon their fasces, while the whole space of
the great Corinthian hall within, lighted from above, and
adorned with vast black pillars of Lucullean marble, was

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

crowded with the white robes of the consul's plebeian
clients tendering their morning salutations; not unmixed
with the crimson fringes and broad crimson facings of
senatorial visitors.

Many were there with gifts of all kinds; countrymen
from his Sabine farm and his Tusculan retreat, some
pringing lambs; some cages full of doves; cheeses, and
bowls of fragrant honey; and robes of fine white linen,
the produce of their daughters' looms; for whom perchance
they were seeking dowers at the munificence of
their noble patron; artizans of the city, with toys or
pieces of furniture, lamps, writing cases, cups or vases of
rich workmanship; courtiers with manuscripts rarely illuminated,
the work of their most valuable slaves; travellers
with gems, and bronzes, offerings known to be esteemed
beyond all others by the high-minded lover of the arts,
and unrivalled scholar, to whom they were presented.

These presents, after being duly exhibited to the patron
himself, who was seated at the farther end of the hall,
concealed from the eyes of Paullus by the intervening
crowd, were consigned to the care of the various slaves, or
freedmen, who stood round their master, and borne away
according to their nature, to the storerooms and offices, or
to the library and gallery of the consul; while kind
words and a courteous greeting, and a consideration most
ample and attentive even of the smallest matters brought
before him, awaited all who approached the orator;
whether he came empty handed, or full of gifts, to require
an audience.

After a little while, Arvina penetrated far enough
through the crowd to command a view of the consul's
seat; and for a time he amused himself by watching his
movements and manner toward each of his visitors,
perhaps not altogether without reference to the conversation
he had recently held with Catiline; and certainly not
without a desire to observe if the tales he had heard of
shameless bribery and corruption, as practiced by many
of the great officers of the republic, had any confirmation
in the conduct of Cicero.

But he soon saw that the courtesies of that great and
virtuous man were regulated neither by the value of the
gifts offered, nor by the rank of the visitors; and that his

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

personal predilections even were not allowed to interfere
with the division of his time among all worthy of his notice.

Thus he remarked that a young noble, famed for his
dissoluteness and evil courses, although he brought an exquisite
sculpture of Praxiteles, was received with the
most marked and formal coldness, and his gift, which could
not be declined, consigned almost without eliciting a glance
of approbation, to the hand of a freedman; while, the
next moment, as an old white-headed countryman, plainly
and almost meanly clad, although with scrupulous cleanliness,
approached his presence, the consul rose to meet
him; and advancing a step or two took him affectionately
by the hand, and asked after his family by name, and listened
with profound consideration to the garrulous narrative
of the good farmer, who, involved in some petty litigation,
had come to seek the advice of his patron; until
he sent him away happy and satisfied with the promise of
his protection.

By and by his own turn arrived; and, although he was
personally unknown to the orator, and the assistance of
the nomenclator, who stood behind the curule chair, was
required before he was addressed by name, he was received
with the utmost attention; the noble house to
which the young man belonged being as famous for its
devotion to the common weal, as for the ability and virtue
of its sons.

After a few words of ordinary compliment, Paullus
proceeded to intimate to his attentive hearer that his object
in waiting at his levee that morning was to communicate
momentous information. The thoughtful eye of the great
orator brightened, and a keen animated expression came
over the features, which had before worn an air almost of
lassitude; and he asked eagerly—

“Momentous to the Republic—to Rome, my good
friend?”—for all his mind was bent on discovering the
plots, which he suspected even now to be in process
against the state.

“Momentous to yourself, Consul,” answered Arvina.

“Then will it wait,” returned the other, with a slight
look of disappointment, “and I will pray you to remain,
until I have spoken with all my friends here. It will not

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

be very long, for I have seen nearly all the known faces.
If you are, in the mean time, addicted to the humane arts,
Davus here will conduct you to my library, where you
shall find food for the mind; or if you have not breakfasted,
my Syrian will shew you where some of my youthful
friends are even now partaking a slight meal.”

Accepting the first offer, partly perhaps from a sort of
pardonable hypocrisy, desiring to make a favourable impression
on the great man, with whom he had for the
first time spoken, Arvina followed the intelligent and civil
freedman to the library, which was indeed the favourite
apartment of the studious magistrate. And, if he half repented,
as he went by the chamber wherein several youths
of patrician birth, one or two of whom nodded to him as
he passed, were assembled, conversing merrily and jesting
around a well spread board, he ceased immediately to
regret the choice he had made, when the door was thrown
open, and he was ushered into the shrine of Cicero's literary
leisure.

The library was a small square apartment; for it must
be remembered that books at this time being multiplied
by manual labor only, and the art being comparatively
rare and very costly, the vast collections of modern times
were utterly beyond the reach of individuals; and a few
scores of volumes were more esteemed than would be as
many thousands now, in these days of multiplying presses
and steam power. But although inconsiderable in size,
not being above sixteen feet square, the decorations of the
apartment were not to be surpassed or indeed equalled by
anything of modern splendor; for the walls,[4] divided into
compartments by mouldings, exquisitely carved and over-laid
with burnished gilding, were set with panels of thick
plate glass glowing in all the richest hues of purple,
ruby, emerald, and azure, through several squares of which
the light stole in, gorgeously tinted, from the peristyle,
there being no distinction except in this between the windows
and the other compartments of the wainscot, if it

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

may be so styled; and of the ceiling, which was finished in
like manner with slabs of stained glass, between the intersecting
beams of gilded scroll work.

The floor was of beautiful mosaic, partially covered by
a foot-cloth woven from the finest wool, and dyed purple
with the juice of the cuttle-fish; and all the furniture corresponded,
both in taste and magnificence, to the other decorations
of the room. A circular table of cedar wood,
inlaid with ivory and brass, so that its value could not have
fallen far short of ten thousand sesterces[5], stood in the
centre of the floor-cloth; with a bisellium, or double settle,
wrought in bronze, and two beautiful chairs of the same
material not much dissimilar in form to those now used.
And, to conclude, a bookcase of polished maple wood, one
of the doors of which stood open, displayed a rare collection
of about three hundred volumes, each in its circular
case of purple parchment, having the name inscribed in
letters of gold, silver, or vermilion.

A noble bust in bronze of the Phidian Jupiter, with the
sublime expanse of brow, the ambrosian curls and the
beard loosely waving, as when he shook Olympus by his
nod, and the earth trembled and the depth of Tartarus,
stood on a marble pedestal facing the bookcase; and on
the table, beside writing materials, leaves of parchment, an
ornamental letter-case, a double inkstand and several reed
pens, were scattered many gems and trinkets; signets and
rings engraved in a style far surpassing any effort of the
modern graver, vases of onyx and cut glass, and above all,
the statue of a beautiful boy, holding a lamp of bronze suspended
by a chain from his left hand, and in his right the
needle used to refresh the wick.

Nurtured as he had been from his youth upward among
the magnates of the land, accustomed to magnificence and
luxury till he had almost fancied that the world had nothing
left of beautiful or new that he had not witnessed,
Paul stood awhile, after the freedman had departed, gazing
with mute admiration on the richness and taste displayed
in all the details of this the scholar's sanctum. The very
atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of
the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent
of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding
god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity,
who appeared to his excited fancy to smile serene protection
on the pursuits of the blameless consul, inspired him
with a sense of awful veneration, that did not easily or
quickly pass away.

For some moments, as he gradually recovered the elasticity
of his spirits, he amused himself by examining the
exquisitely wrought gems on the table; but after a little
while, when Cicero came not, he crossed the room quietly
to the bookshelves, and selecting a volume of Homer, drew
it forth from its richly embossed case, and seating himself
on the bronze settle with his back toward the door, had
soon forgotten where he was, and the grave business which
brought him thither, in the sublime simplicity of the blind
rhapsodist.

An hour or more elapsed thus; yet Paul took no note
of time, nor moved at all except to unroll with his right
hand the lower margin of the parchment as he read, while
with the left he rolled up the top; so that nearly the same
space of the manuscript remained constantly before his
eyes, although the reader was continually advancing in the
poem.

At length the door opened noiselessly, and with a silent
foot, shod in the light slippers which the Romans always
wore when in the house, Cicero entered the apartment.

The consul was at this time in the very prime of intellectual
manhood, it having been decreed[6] about a century
before, that no person should be elected to that highest
office of the state, who should not have attained his forty-third
year. He was a tall and elegantly formed man, with
nothing especially worthy of remark in his figure, if it
were not that his neck was unusually long and slender,
though not so much so as to constitute any drawback to
his personal appearance, which, without being what would
exactly be termed handsome, was both elegant and graceful.

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

His features were not, indeed, very bold or striking;
but intellect was strongly and singularly marked in every
line of the face; and the expression,—calm, thoughtful,
and serene,—though it had not the quick and restless play
of ever-varying lights and shadows which belongs to the
quicker and more imaginative temperaments among men
of the highest genius,—could not fail to impress any one
with the conviction, that the mind which informed it must
be of eminent capacity, and depth, and power.

He entered, as I have said, silently; and although there
was nothing of stealthiness in his gait, which being very
light and slow was yet both firm and springy, nor any of
that cunning in his manner which is so often coupled to a
prowling footstep, he yet advanced so noiselessly over the
soft floor-cloth, that he stood at Arvina's elbow, and over-looked
the page in which he was reading, before the young
man was aware of his vicinity.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, after standing a moment, and observing
with a soft pleasant smile the abstraction of his
visitor, “so thou readest Greek, and art thyself a poet.”

“A little of the first, my consul,” replied Arvina, arising
quickly to his feet, with the ingenuous blood rushing
to his brow at the detection. “But wherefore shouldst
thou believe me the second?”

“We statesmen,” answered the consul, “are wont to
study other men's characters, as other men are wont to
study books; and I have learned by practice to draw quick
conculsions from small signs. But in this instance, the light
in your eye, the curl of your expanded nostril, the half
frown on your brow, and the flush on your cheek, told me
beyond a doubt that you are a poet. And you are so,
young man. I care not whether you have penned as yet
an elegy, or no—nevertheless, you are in soul, in temperament,
in fantasy, a poet. Do you love Homer?”

“Beyond all other writers I have ever met, in my small
course of reading. There is a majesty, a truth, an everburning
fire, lustrous, yet natural and most beneficent,
like the sun's glory on a summer day, in his immortal
words, that kindles and irradiates, yet consumes not the
soul; a grand simplicity, that never strains for effect; a
sweet pathos, that elicits tears without evoking them; a
melody that flows on, like the harmony of the eternal sea,

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

or, if we may call fancy to our aid, the music of the spheres,
telling us that like these the blind bard sang, because song
was his nature—was within, and must out—not bound by
laws, or measured by pedantic rules, but free, unfettered,
and spontaneous as the billows, which in its wild and
many-cadenced sweep it most resembles.”

“Ah! said I not,” replied Cicero, “that you were a
poet? And you have been discoursing me most eloquent
poetry; though not attuned to metre, rythmical withal, and
full of fancy. Ay! and you judge aright. He is the
greatest, as the first of poets; and surpassed all his followers
as much in the knowledge of the human heart with its
ten thousands of conflicting passions, as in the structure of
the kingly verse, wherein he delineated character as never
man did, saving only he. But hold, Arvina. Though I
could willingly spend hours with thee in converse on this
topic, the state has calls on me, which must be obeyed.
Tell me, therefore, I pray you, as shortly as may be, what
is the matter you would have me know. Shortly, I pray
you, for my time is short, and my duties onerous and manifold.”

Laying aside the roll, which he had still held open during
that brief conversation, and laying aside with it his
enthusiastic and passionate manner, the young man now
stated, simply and briefly, the events of the past night, the
discovery of the murdered slave, and the accident by
which he had learned that he was the consul's property;
and in conclusion, laid the magnificently ornamented dag
ger which he had found, on the board before Cicero; observing,
that the weapon might give a clue to poor Medon's
death.

Cicero was moved deeply—moved, not simply, as Arvina
fancied, by sorrow for the dead, but by something approaching
nearly to remorse. He started up from the
chair, which he had taken when the youth began his tale,
and clasping his hands together violently, strode rapidly
to and fro the small apartment.

“Alas, and wo is me, poor Medon! Faithful wert thou,
and true, and very pleasant to mine eyes! Alas! that
thou art gone, and gone too so wretchedly! And wo is
me, that I listened not to my own apprehensions, rather
than to thy trusty boldness. Alas! that I suffered thee to

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

go, for they have murdered thee! ay, thine own zeal betrayed
thee; but by the Gods that govern in Olympus,
they shall rue it!”

After this burst of passion he became more cool, and,
resuming his seat, asked Paullus a few shrewd and pertinent
questions concerning the nature of the ground whereon
he had found the corpse, the traces left by the mortal
struggle, the hour at which the discovery was made, and
many other minute points of the same nature; the answers
to which he noted carefully on his waxed tablets. When
he had made all the inquiries that occurred to him, he read
aloud the answers as he had set them down, and asked if
he would be willing at any moment to attest the truth of
those things.

“At any moment, and most willingly, my consul,” the
youth replied. “I would do much myself to find out the
murderers and bring them to justice, were it only for my
poor freedman Thrasea's sake, who is his cousin-german.”

“Fear not, young man, they shall be brought to justice,”
answered Cicero. “In the meantime do thou keep silence,
nor say one word touching this to any one that lives.
Carry the dagger with thee; wear it as ostentatiously as
may be—perchance it shall turn out that some one may
claim or recognise it. Whatever happeneth, let me know
privately. Thus far hast thou done well, and very wisely:
go on as thou hast commenced, and, hap what hap, count
Cicero thy friend. But above all, doubt not—I say, doubt
not one moment,—that as there is One eye that seeth all
things in all places, that slumbereth not by day nor sleepeth
in the watches of night, that never waxeth weak at any
time or weary—as there is One hand against which no
panoply can arm the guilty, from which no distance can
protect, nor space of time secure him, so surely shall they
perish miserable who did this miserable murder, and their
souls rue it everlastingly beyond the portals of the grave,
which are but the portals of eternal life, and admit all men
to wo or bliss, for ever and for ever!”

He spoke solemnly and sadly; and on his earnest face
there was a deep and almost awful expression, that held
Arvina mute and abashed, he knew not wherefore; and
when the great man had ceased from speaking, he made a
silent gesture of salutation and withdrew, thus gravely

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

warned, scarce conscious if the statesman noted his departure;
for he had fallen into a deep reverie, and was perhaps
musing on the mysteries yet unrevealed of the immortal
soul, so totally careless did he now appear of all
sublunary matters.

eaf146v1.n4

[4] It must not be imagined that this is fanciful. Rooms were fitted up
in this manner, and termed camer æ vitreæ, and the panels vitreæ quadraturæ.
But a few years later than the period of the text, B. C. 58, M. æmilius
Scaurus built a theatre capable of containing 80,000 persons, the scena of
which, composed of three stories, had one, the central, made entirely of
colored glass in this fashion.

CHAPTER V. THE CAMPUS.

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

“What ho! my noble Paullus,” exclaimed a loud and
cheerful voice, “whither afoot so early, and with so grave
a face?”

Arvina started; for so deep was the impression made
on his mind by the last words of Cicero, that he had passed
out into the Sacred Way, and walked some distance
down it, toward the Forum, in deep meditation, from
which he was aroused by the clear accents of the merry
speaker.

Looking up with a smile as he recognised the voice, he
saw two young men of senatorial rank—for both wore the
crimson laticlave on the breast of their tunics—on horseback,
followed by several slaves on foot, who had overtaken
him unnoticed amid the din and bustle which had
drowned the clang of their horses' feet on the pavement.

“Nay, I scarce know, Aurelius!” replied the young
man, laughing; “I thought I was going home, but it seems
that my back is turned to my own house, and I am going
toward the market-place, although the Gods know that I
have no business with the brawling lawyers, with whom it
is alive by this time.”

“Come with us, then,” replied the other; “Aristius.
here, and I, have made a bet upon our coursers' speed.

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

He fancies his Numidian can outrun my Gallic beauty.
Come with us to the Campus; and after we have settled
this grave matter, we will try the quinquertium,[7] or a foot
race in armor, if you like it better, or a swim in the Tiber,
until it shall be time to go to dinner.”

“How can I go with you, seeing that you are well
mounted, and I afoot, and encumbered with my gown?
You must consider me a second Achilles to keep up with
your fleet coursers, clad in this heavy toga, which is a
worse garb for running than any panoply that Vulcan
ever wrought.”

“We will alight,” cried the other youth, who had not
yet spoken, “and give our horses to the boys to lead behind
us; or, hark you, why not send Geta back to your
house, and let your slaves bring down your horse too? If
they make tolerable speed, coming down by the back of
the Cœlian, and thence beside the Aqua Crabra† to the
Carmental gate, they may overtake us easily before we
reach the Campus. Aurelius has some errand to perform
near the Forum, which will detain us a few moments longer.
What say you?”

“He will come, he will come, certainly,” cried the
other, springing down lightly from the back of his beautiful
courser, which indeed merited the eulogium, as well as
the caresses which he now lavished on it, patting his favorite's
high-arched neck, and stroking the soft velvet muzzle,
which was thrust into his hand, with a low whinnying
neigh of recognition, as he stood on the raised foot path,
holding the embroidered rein carelessly in his hand.

“I will,” said Arvina, “gladly; I have nothing to hinder
me this morning; and for some days past I have been
detained with business, so that I have not visited the campus,
or backed a horse, or cast a javelin—by Hercules!
not since the Ides, I fancy. You will all beat me in the
field, that is certain, and in the river likewise. But come,

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

Fuscus Aristius, if it is to be as you have planned it,
jump down from your Numidian, and let your Geta ride
him up the hill to my house. I would have asked Aurelius,
but he will let no slave back his white Notus.”

“Not I, by the twin horsemen! nor any free man either—
plebeian, knight, or noble. Since first I bought him of
the blue-eyed Celt, who wept in his barbarian fondness
for the colt, no leg save only mine has crossed his back,
nor ever shall, while the light of day smiles on Aurelius
Victor.”

Without a word Fuscus leaped from the back of the
fine blood-bay barb he bestrode, and beckoning to a confidential
slave who followed him, “Here,” he said, “Geta,
take Xanthus, and ride straightway up the Minervium to
the house of Arvina; thou knowest it, beside the Alban
Mansions, and do as he shall command you. Tell him,
my Paullus.”

“Carry this signet, my good Geta,” said the young
man, drawing off the large seal-ring which adorned his
right hand, and giving it to him, “to Thrasea, my trusty
freedman, and let him see that they put the housings and
gallic wolf-bit on the black horse Aufidus, and bring him
thou, with one of my slaves, down the slope of Scaurus,
and past the Great Circus, to the Carmental Gate, where
thou wilt find us. Make good speed, Geta.”

“Ay, do so,” interposed his master, “but see that thou
dost not blow Xanthus; thou wert better be a dead slave,
Geta, than let me find one drop of sweat on his flank.
Nay! never grin, thou hang-dog, or I will have thee given
to my Congers[8]; the last which came out of the fish pond
were but ill fed; and a fat German, such as thou, would
be a rare meal for them.”

The slave laughed, knowing well that his master was
but jesting, mounted the horse, and rode him at a gentle
trot, up the slope of the Cælian hill, from which Arvina
had but a little while before descended. In the mean
time, Aristius gave the rein of his dappled grey to one of

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

his followers, desiring him to be very gentle with him, and
the three young men sauntered slowly on along the Sacred
Way toward the Forum, conversing merrily and interchanging
many a smile and salutation with those whom they
met on their road.

Skirting the base of the Palatine hill, they passed the
old circular temple of Remus to the right hand, and the
most venerable relic of Rome's infancy, the Ruminal Fig
tree, beneath which the she-wolf was believed to have
given suck to the twin progeny of Mars and the hapless
Ilia. A little farther on, the mouth of the sacred grotto
called Lupercal, surrounded with its shadowy grove, the
favourite haunt of Pan, lay to their left; and fronting
them, the splendid arch of Fabius, surnamed Allobrox for
his victorious prowess against that savage tribe, gave entrance
to the great Roman Forum.

Immediately at their left hand as they entered the arch-way,
was the superb Comitium, wherein the Senate were
wont to give audience to foreign embassies of suppliant
nations, with the gigantic portico, three columns of which
may still be seen to testify to the splendor of the old city,
in the far days of the republic. Facing them were the
steps of the Asylum, with the Mamertine prison and the
grand facade of the temple of Concord to the right and
left; and higher above these the portico of the gallery of
records, and higher yet the temple of the thundering
Jupiter, and glittering above all, against the dark blue
sky, the golden dome, and white marble columns of the
great capitol itself. Around in all directions were basilic
æ, or halls of justice; porticoes filled with busy lawyers;
bankers' shops glittering with their splendid wares,
and bedecked with the golden shields taken from the
Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages, Accius Næ
vius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius
Cocles on his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee
from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming
the swollen Tiber; Clælia the hostage on her brazen
steed; and many another, handed down inviolate from the
days of the ancient kings. Here was the rostrum, beaked
with the prows of ships, a fluent orator already haranguing
the assembled people from its platform—there, the seat
of the city Prætor, better known as the Puteal Libonis,

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

with that officer in session on his curule chair, his six
lictors leaning on their fasces at his back, as he promulgated
his irrevocable edicts.

It was a grand sight, surely, and one to gaze on which
men of the present day would do and suffer much; and
judge theselves most happy if blessed with one momentary
glance of the heart, as it were, of the old world's
mistress. But these young men, proud as they were,
and boastful of the glories of their native Rome, had
looked too often on that busy scene to be attracted by
the gorgeousness of the place, crowded with buildings,
the like of which the modern world knows not, and
thronged with nations of every region of the earth, each
in his proper dress, each seeking justice, pleasure, profit,
fame, as it pleased him, free, and fearless, and secure of
property and person. Casting a brief glance over it, they
turned short to the left, by a branch of the Sacred Way,
which led, skirting the market place, between the Comitium,
or hall of the ambassadors, and the abrupt declivity
of the Palatine, past the end of the Atrium of Liberty,
and the cattle mart, toward the Carmental gate.

“Methought you said, my Fuscus, that our Aurelius had
some errand to perform in the Forum; how is this, is it
a secret?” inquired Paullus, laughing.

“No secret, by the Gods!” said Aurelius, “it is but to
buy a pair of spurs in Volero's shop, hard by Vesta's
shrine.”

“He will need them,” cried Fuscus, “he will need
them, I will swear, in the race.”

“Not to beat Xanthus,” said Aurelius; “but oh!
Jove! walk quickly, I beseech you; how hot a steam of
cooked meats and sodden cabbage, reeks from the door of
you cook-shop. Now, by the Gods! it well nigh sickened
me! Ha! Volero,” he exclaimed, as they reached the
door of a booth, or little shop, with neat leathern curtains
festooned up in front, glittering with polished cutlery
and wares of steel and silver, to a middle aged man, who
was busy burnishing a knife within, “what ho! my
Volero, some spurs—I want some spurs; show me some
of your sharpest and brightest.”

“I have a pair, noble Aurelius, which I got only yesterday
in trade with a turbaned Moor from the deserts

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

beyond Cyrenaica. By Mulciber, my patron god! the
fairest pair my eyes ever looked upon. Right loath was
the swart barbarian to let me have them, but hunger,
hunger is a great tamer of your savage; and the steam
of good Furbo's cook-shop yonder was suggestive of
savory chops and greasy sausages—and—and—in short,
Aurelius, I got them at a bargain.”

While he was speaking, he produced the articles in
question, from a strong brass-bound chest, and rubbing
them on his leather apron held them up for the inspection
of the youthful noble.

“Truly,” cried Victor, catching them out of his hand,
“truly, they are good spurs.”

“Good spurs! good spurs!” cried the merchant, half
indignantly, “I call them splendid, glorious, inimitable!
Only look you here, it is all virgin silver; and observe,
I beseech you, this dragon's neck and the sibilant head
that holds the rowels; they are wrought to the very life
with horrent scales, and erected crest; beautiful! beautiful!—
and the rowels too of the best Spanish steel that
was ever tempered in the cold Bilbilis. Good spurs indeed!
they are well worth three aurei.[9] But I will
keep them, as I meant to do at first, for Caius Cæsar;
he will know what they are worth, and give it too.”

“Didst ever hear so pestilent a knave?” said Victor,
laughing; “one would suppose I had disparaged the
accursed things! But, as I said before, they are good
spurs, and I will have them; but I will not give thee
three aurei, master Volero; two is enough, in all conscience;
or sixty denarii at the most. Ho! Davus, Davus!
bring my purse, hither, Davus,” he called to his
slaves without; and, as the purse-bearer entered, he continued
without waiting for an answer, “Give Volero two
aurei, and ten denarii, and take these spurs.”

“No! no!” exclaimed Volero, “you shall not—no!
by the Gods! they cost me more than that!”

“Ye Gods! what a lie! cost thee—and to a barbarian!
I dare be sworn thou didst not pay him the ten denarii
alone.”

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

“By Hercules! I did, though,” said the other, “and
thou shouldst not have them for three aurei either, but that
it is drawing near the Calends of November, and I have
moneys to pay then.”

“Sixty-five I will give thee—sixty-five denarii!”

“Give me my spurs; what, art thou turning miser in
thy youth, Aurelius?”

“There, give him the gold, Davus; he is a regular
usurer. Give him three aurei, and then buckle these to
my heel. Ha! that is well, my Paullus, here come your
fellows with black Aufidus, and our friend Geta on the
Numidian. They have made haste, yet not sweated Xanthus
either. Aristius, your groom is a good one; I never
saw a horse that shewed his keeping or condition better.
Now then, Arvina, doff your toga, you will not surely ride
in that.”

“Indeed I will not,” replied Paullus, “if master Volero
will suffer me to leave it here till my return.”

“Willingly, willingly; but what is this?” exclaimed the
cutler, as Arvina unbuckling his toga and suffering it to
drop on the ground, stood clad in his succinct and snow-white
tunic only, girded about him with a zone of purple
leather, in which was stuck the sheathless dirk of Cataline.
“What is this, noble Paullus, that you carry at your belt,
with no scabbard? If you go armed, you should at least
go safely. See, if you were to bend your body somewhat
quickly, it might well be that the keen point would rend
your groin. Give it me, I can fit it with a sheath in a
moment.”

“I do not know but it were as well to do so,” answered
Paullus, extricating the dagger from his belt, “if you will
not detain us a long time.”

“Not even a short time!” said the cutler, “give it to
me, I can fit it immediately.” And he stretched out his
hand and took it; but hardly had his eye dwelt on it, for
a moment, when he cried, “but this is not yours—this is—
where got you this, Arvina?”

“Nay, it is nought to thee; perhaps I bought it, perhaps
it was given to me; do thou only fit it with a scabbard.”

“Buy it thou didst not, Paullus, I'll be sworn; and I

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

think it was never given thee; and, see, see here, what is
this?—there has been blood on the blade!”

“Folly!” exclaimed the young man, turning first very
red and then pale, so that his comrades gazed on him with
wonder, “folly, I say. It is not blood, but water that has
dimmed its shine;—and how knowest thou that I did not
buy it?”

“How do I know it?—thus,” answered the artizan,
drawing from a cupboard under his counter, a weapon
precisely the facsimile in every respect of that in his
hand: “There never were but two of these made, and I
made them; the scabbard of this will fit that; see how
the very chased work fits!” I sold this, but not to you,
Arvina; and I do not believe that it was given to you.”

“Filth that thou art, and carrion!” exclaimed the young
man fiercely, striking his hand with violence upon the
counter, “darest thou brave a nobleman? I tell thee, I
doubt not at all that there be twenty such in every cutler's
shop in Rome!—but to whom did'st thou sell this, that
thou art so certain?”

“Paullus Cæcilius,” replied the mechanic gravely but
respectfully, “I brave no man, least of all a patrician;
but mark my words—I did sell this dagger; here is my
own mark on its back; if it was given to thee, thou must
needs know the giver; for the rest, this is blood that has
dimmed it, and not water; you cannot deceive me in the
matter; and I would warn you, youth,—noble as you are,
and plebeian I,—that there are laws in Rome, one of them
called Cornelia de Sicariis, which you were best take
care that you know not more nearly. Meantime, you can
take this scabbard if you will,” handing to him, as he
spoke, the sheath of the second weapon; “the price is
one sestertium; it is the finest silver, chased as you see,
and overlaid with pure gold.”

“Thou hast the money,” returned Paullus, casting
down on the counter several golden coins, stamped with a
helmed head of Mars, and an eagle on the reverse, grasping
a thunderbolt in its talons—“and the sheath is mine.
Then thou wilt not disclose to whom it was sold?”

“Why should I, since thou knowest without telling?”

“Wilt thou, or not?”

“Not to thee, Paullus.”

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

“Then will I find some one, to whom thou wilt fain disclose
it!” he answered haughtily.

“And who may that be, I beseech you?” asked the
mechanic, half sneeringly. “For my part, I fancy you
will let it rest altogether; some one was hurt with it last
night, as you and he, we both know, can tell if you will!
But I knew not that you were one of his men.”

There was an insolent sneer on the cutler's face that
galled the young nobleman to the quick; and what was
yet more annoying, there was an assumption of mutual intelligence
and equality about him, that almost goaded the
patrician's blood to fury. But by a mighty effort he subdued
his passion to his will; and snatching up the weapon
returned it to his belt, left the shop, and springing to the
saddle of his beautiful black horse, rode furiously away.
It was not till he reached the Carmental Gate, giving
egress from the city through the vast walls of Cyclopean
architecture, immediately at the base of the dread Tarpeian
rock, overlooked and commanded by the outworks
and turrets of the capitol, that he drew in his eager horse,
and looked behind him for his friends. But they were not
in sight; and a moment's reflection told him that, being
about to start their coursers on a trial of speed, they would
doubtless ride gently over the rugged pavement of the
crowded streets.

He doubted for a minute, whether he should turn back
to meet them, or wait for their arrival at the gate, by which
they must pass to gain the campus; but the fear of missing
them, instantly induced him to adopt the latter course, and
he sat for a little space motionless on his well-bitted and
obedient horse beneath the shadow of the deep gate-way.

Here his eye wandered around him for awhile, taking
note indeed of the surrounding objects, the great temple
of Jupiter Stator on the Palatine; the splendid portico of
Catulus, adorned with the uncouth and grisly spoils of the
Cimbric hordes slaughtered on the plains of Vercellæ; the
house of Scaurus, toward which a slow wain tugged by
twelve powerful oxen was even then dragging one of the
pondrous columns which rendered his hall for many years
the boast of Roman luxury; and on the other tall buildings
that stood every where about him; although in truth
he scarce observed what for the time his eye dwelt upon.

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

At length an impatient motion of his horse caused him
to turn his face toward the black precipice of the huge
rock at whose base he sat, and in a moment it fastened
upon his mind with singular vividness—singular, for he
had paused fifty times upon that spot before, without experiencing
such feelings—that he was on the very pavement,
which had so often been bespattered with the blood
of despairing traitors. The noble Manlius, tumbled from
the very rock, which his single arm had but a little while
before defended, seemed to lie there, even at his feet,
mortally maimed and in the agony of death, yet even so
too proud to mix one groan with the curses he poured
forth against Rome's democratic rabble. Then, by a not
inapt transition, the scene changed, and Caius Marcius was
at hand, with the sword drawn in his right, that won him
the proud name of Coriolanus, and the same rabble that
had hurled Caius Manlius down, yelling and hooting “to
the rock with him! to the rock!” but at a safe and respectful
distance; their factious tribunes goading them to out-rage
and new riot.

It was strange that these thoughts should have occurred
so clearly at this moment to the excited mind of the young
noble; and he felt that it was strange himself; and would
have banished the ideas, but they would not away; and
he continued musing on the inconstant turbulence of the
plebeians, and the unerring doom which had overtaken
every one of their idols, from the hands of their own partizans,
until his companions at length rode slowly up the
street to join him.

There was some coldness in the manner of Aristius
Fuscus, as they met again, and even Aurelius seemed
surprised and not well pleased; for they had in truth been
conversing earnestly about the perturbation of their friend
at the remarks of the artizan, and the singularity of his
conduct in wearing arms at all; and he heard Victor say
just before they joined company—

“No! that is not so odd, Fuscus, in these times. It
was but two nights since, as I was coming home something
later than my wont from Terentia's, that I fell in
with Clodius reeling along, frantically drunk and furious,
with half a dozen torch-bearers before, and half a score
wolfish looking gladiators all armed with blade and

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

buckler, and all half-drunk, behind him. I do assure you that
I almost swore I would go out no more without weapons.”

“They would have done you no good, man,” said Aristius,
“if some nineteen or twenty had set upon you. But
an they would, I care not; it is against the law, and no
good citizen should carry them at all.”

“Carry arms, I suppose you mean, Aristius,” interrupted
Paullus boldly. “Ye are talking about me, I fancy—
is it not so?”

“Ay, it is,” replied the other gravely. “You were
disturbed not a little at what stout Volero said.”

“I was, I was,” answered Arvina very quickly, “because
I could not tell him; and it is not pleasant to be
suspected. The truth is that the dagger is not mine at all,
and that it is blood that was on it; for last night—but lo!”
he added, interrupting himself, “I was about to speak out,
and tell you all; and yet my lips are sealed.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Aristius, “I do not like
mysteries; and this seems to me a dark one!”

“It is—as dark as Erebus,” said Paullus eagerly, “and
as guilty too; but it is not my mystery, so help me the
god of good faith and honour!”

“That is enough said; surely that is enough for you,
Aristius,” exclaimed the warmer and more excitable Aurelius.

“For you it may be,” replied the noble youth, with a
melancholy smile. “You are a boy in heart, my Aurelius,
and overflow so much with generosity and truth that you
believe all others to be as frank and candid. I alas!
have grown old untimely, and, having seen what I have
seen, hold men's assertions little worth.”

The hot blood mounted fiercely into the cheek of Paullus;
and, striking his horse's flank suddenly with his heel,
he made him passage half across the street, and would
have seized Aristius by the throat, had not their comrade
interposed to hinder him.

“You are both mad, I believe; so mad that all the
hellebore in both the Anticyras could not cure you. Thou,
Fuscus, for insulting him with needless doubts. Thou,
Paullus, for mentioning the thing, or shewing the dagger
at all, if you did not choose to explain.”

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

“I do choose to explain,” replied Cæcilius, “but I cannot;
I have explained it all to Marcus Tullius.”

“To Cicero,” exclaimed Aristius. “Why did you not
say so before? I was wrong, then, I confess my error;
if Cicero be satisfied, it must needs be all well.”

“That name of Cicero is like the voice of an oracle to
Fuscus ever!” said Aurelius Victor, laughing. “I believe
he thinks the new man from Arpinum a very god, descended
from Olympus!”

“No! not a God,” replied Aristius Fuscus, “only the
greatest work of God, a wise and virtuous man, in an
age which has few such to boast. But come, let us ride
on and conclude our race; and thou, Arvina, forget what
I said; I meant not to wrong thee.”

“I have forgotten,” answered Paullus; and, with the
word, they gave their horses head, and cantered onward
for the field of Mars.

The way for some distance was narrow, lying between
the fortified rock of the Capitol, with its stern lines of immemorial
ramparts on the right hand, and on the left
the long arcades and stately buildings of the vegetable
mart, on the river bank, now filled with sturdy peasants,
from the Sabine country, eager to sell their fresh green
herbs; and blooming girls, from Tibur and the banks of
Anio, with garlands of flowers, and cheeks that outvied
their own brightest roses.

Beyond these, still concealing the green expanse of the
level plain, and the famous river, stood side by side three
temples, sacred to Juno Matuta, Piety, and Hope; each
with its massy colonnade of Doric or Corinthian, or Ionic
pillars; the latter boasting its frieze wrought in bronze;
and that of Piety, its tall equestrian statue, so richly gilt
and burnished that it gleamed in the sunlight as if it
were of solid gold.

Onward they went, still at a merry canter, their generous
and high mettled coursers fretting against the bits which
restrained their speed, and their young hearts elated and
bounding quickly in their bosoms, with the excitement of
the gallant exercise; and now they cleared the last winding
of the suburban street, and clothed in its perennial
verdure, the wide field lay outspread, like one sheet of
emerald verdure, before them, with the bright Tiber flash

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

ing to the sun in many a reach and ripple, and the gay
slope of the Collis Hortulorum, glowing with all its terraced
gardens in the distance.

A few minutes more brought them to the Flaminian way,
whereon, nearly midway the plain, stood the diribitorium,
or pay-office of the troops; the porticoes of which were
filled with the soldiers of Metellus Creticus, and Quintus
Marcius Rex, who lay with their armies encamped on the
low hills beyond the river, waiting their triumphs, and forbidden
by the laws to come into the city so long as they
remained invested with their military rank. Around this
stately building were many colonnades, and open buildings
adapted to the exercises of the day, when winter
or bad weather should prevent their performance in the
open mead, and stored with all appliances, and instruments
required for the purpose; and to these Paullus and
his friends proceeded, answering merely with a nod or
passing jest the salutations of many a helmed centurion
and gorgeous tribune of the soldiery.

A grand Ionic gateway gave them admittance to the
hippodrome, a vast oval space, adorned with groups of
sculpture and obelisks and columns in the midst; on
some of which were affixed inscriptions commemorative
of great feats of skill or strength or daring; while others
displayed placards announcing games or contests to take
place in future, and challenges of celebrated gymnasts
for the cestus fight, the wrestling match, or the foot-race.

Around the outer circumference were rows of seats,
shaded by plane trees overrun with ivy, and there were
already seated many young men of noble birth, chatting
together, or betting, with their waxed tablets and their
styli[10] in their hands, some waiting the commencement of
the race between Fuscus and Victor, others watching
with interest the progress of a sham fight on horseback
between two young men of the equestrian order, denoted
by the narrow crimson stripes on their tunics, who were
careering to and fro, armed with long staves and circular
bucklers, in all the swift and beautiful movements of the
mimic combat.

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

Among those most interested in this spectacle, the eye
of Arvina fell instantly on the tall and gaunt form of Catiline,
who stood erect on one of the marble benches, applauding
with his hands, and now and then shouting a
word of encouragement to the combatants, as they wheeled
by him in the mazes of their half angry sport. It was
not long, however, before their strife was brought to a
conclusion; for, almost as the friends entered, the hind-most
horseman of the two made a thrust at the other,
which taking effect merely on the lower rim of his antagonist's
parma, glanced off under his outstretched arm,
and made the striker, in a great measure, lose his balance.
As quick as light, the other wheeled upon him, feinted a
pass at his breast with the point of the staff; and then, as
he lowered his shield to guard himself, reversed the
weapon with a swift turn of the wrist, dealt him a heavy
blow with the trunchon on the head; and then, while the
whole place rang with tumultuous plaudits, circled entirely
round him to the left, and delivered his thrust with such
effect in the side, that it bore his competitor clear out of
the saddle.

“Euge! Euge! well done,” shouted Catiline in ecstacy;
“by Hercules! I never saw in all my life better
skirmishing. It is all over with Titus Varus!”

And in truth it was all over with him; but not in the
sense which the speaker meant: for, as he fell, the horses
came into collision, and it so happened that the charger
of the conqueror, excited by the fury of the contest, laid
hold of the other's neck with his teeth, and almost tore
away a piece of the muscular flesh at the very moment
when the rider's spur, as he fell, cut a long gash in his
flank.

With a wild yelling neigh, the tortured brute yerked
out his heels viciously; and, as ill luck would have it, both
took effect on the person of his fallen master, one striking
him a terrible blow on the chest, the other shattering his
collar bone and shoulder.

A dozen of the spectators sprang down from the seats
and took him up before Paullus could dismount to aid
him; but, as they raised him from the ground, his eyes
were already glazing.

“Marcius has conquered me,” he muttered in tones of

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

deep mortification, unconscious, as it would seem, of his
agony, and wounded only by the indomitable Roman
pride; and with the words his jaw dropped, and his last
strife was ended.

“The fool!” exclaimed Cataline, with a bitter sneer;
“what had he got to do, that he should ride against Caius
Marcius, when he could not so much as keep his saddle,
the fool!”

“He is gone!” cried another; “game to the last, brave
Varus!”

“He came of a brave race,” said a third; “but he rode
badly!”

“At least not so well as Marcius,” replied yet a fourth;
“but who does? To be foiled by him does not argue bad
riding.”

“Who does? why Paullus, here,” cried Aurelius Victor;
“I'll match him, if he will ride, for a thousand sesterces—
ten thousand, if you will.”

“No! I'll not bet about it. I lost by this cursed chance,”
answered the former speaker; “but Varus did not ride
badly, I maintain it!” he added, with the steadiness of a
discomfited partisan.

“Ay! but he did, most pestilently,” interposed Catiline,
almost fiercely; “but come, come, why don't they
carry him away? we are losing all the morning.”

“I thought he was a friend of yours, Sergius,” said
another of the bystanders, apparently vexed at the heartlessness
of his manner.

“Why, ay! so he was,” replied the conspirator; “but
he is nothing now: nor can my friendship aught avail
him. It was his time and his fate! ours, it may be, will
come to-morrow. Nor do I see at all wherefore our sports
should not proceed, because a man has gone hence. Fifty
men every day die somewhere, while we are dining, drinking,
kissing our mistresses or wives; but do we stop for
that? Ho! bear him hence, we will attend his funeral,
when it shall be soever; and we will drink to his memory
to-day. What comes next, comrades?”

Arvina, it is true, was for a moment both shocked and
disgusted at the heartless and unfeeling tone; but few if
any of the others evinced the like tenderness; for it must
be remembered, in the first place, that the Romans, inured

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

to sights of blood and torture daily in the gladiatorial fights
of the arena, were callous to human suffering, and careless
of human life at all times; and, in the second, that
Stoicism was the predominant affectation of the day, not
only among the rude and coarse, but among the best and
most virtuous citizens of the republic. Few, therefore,
left the ground, when the corpse, decently enveloped in
the toga he had worn when living, was borne homewards;
except the involuntary homicide, who could not even at
that day in decency remain, and a few of his most intimate
associates, who covering their faces in the lappets of their
gowns, followed the bearers in stern and silent sorrow.

Scarcely then had the sad procession threaded the marble
archway, before Catiline again asked loudly and imperiously,

“What is to be the next, I pray you? are we to sit
here like old women by their firesides, croaking and whimpering
till dinner time?”

“No! by the gods,” cried Aurelius, “we have a race
to come off, which I propose to win. Fuscus Aristius here,
and I—we will start instantly, if no one else has the
ground.”

“Away with you then,” answered the other; “come
sit by me, Arvina, I would say a word with you.”

Giving his horse to one of his grooms, the young man
followed him without answer; for although it is true that
Catiline was at this time a marked man and of no favorable
reputation, yet squeamishness in the choice of associates
was never a characteristic of the Romans; and persons,
the known perpetrators of the most atrocious crimes,
so long as they were unconvicted, mingled on terms of
equality, unshunned by any, except the gravest and most
rigid censors. Arvina, too, was very young; and very
young men are often fascinated, as it were, by great reputations,
even of great criminals, with a passionate desire
to see them more closely, and observe the stuff they are
made of. So that, in fact, Catiline being looked upon in
those days much as a desperate gambler, a celebrated
duellist, or a famous seducer of our own time, whom no
one shuns though every one abuses, it was not perhaps
very wonderful if this rash, ardent, and inexperienced
youth should have conceived himself flattered by such

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

notice, from one of whom all the world was talking; and
should have followed him to a seat with a sense of gratified
vanity, blended with eager curiosity.

The race, which followed, differed not much from any
other race; except that the riders having no stirrups,
that being a yet undiscovered luxury, much less depended
upon jockeyship—the skill of the riders being limited
to keeping their seats steadily and guiding the animals
they bestrode—and much more upon the native powers,
the speed and endurance of the coursers.

So much, however, was Arvina interested by the manner
and conversation of the singular man by whose side
he sat, and who was indeed laying himself out with deep
art to captivate him, and take his mind, as it were, by
storm, now with the boldest and most daring paradoxes;
now with bursts of eloquent invective against the oppression
and aristocratic insolence of the cabal, which by his
shewing governed Rome; and now with sarcasm and pungent
wit, that he saw but little of the course, which he had
come especially to look at.

“Do you indeed ride so well, my Paullus?” asked his
companion suddenly, as if the thought had been suggested
by some observation he had just made on the competitors,
as they passed in the second circuit. “So well, I mean,
as Aurelius Victor said; and would you undertake the
combat of the horse and spear with Caius Marcius?”

“Truly I would,” said Arvina, blushing slightly; “I
have interchanged many a blow and thrust with young
Varro, whom our master-at-arms holds better with the
spear than Marcius; and I feel myself his equal. I have
been practising a good deal of late,” he added modestly;
“for, though perhaps you know it not, I have been elected
decurio:[11] and, as first chosen, leader of a troop, and am
to take the field with the next reinforcements that go out
to Pontus to our great Pompey.”

“The next reinforcements,” replied Catiline with a
meditative air: “ha! that may be some time distant.”

“Not so, by Jupiter! my Sergius; we are already

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

ordered to hold ourselves in readiness to march for Brundusium,
where we shall ship for Pontus. I fancy we
shall set forth as soon as the consular comitia have been
held.”

“It may be so,” said the other; “but I do not think it.
There may fall out that which shall rather summon Pompey
homeward, than send more men to join him. That
is a very handsome dagger,” he broke off, interrupting
himself suddenly—“where did you get it? I should like
much to get me such an one to give to my friend Cethegus,
who has a taste for such things. I wonder, however,
at your wearing it so openly.”

Taken completely by surprise, Arvina answered hastily,
“I found it last night; and I wear it, hoping to find the
owner.”

“By Hercules!” said the conspirator laughing; “I
would not take so much pains, were I you. But, do you
hear, I have partly a mind myself to claim it.”

“No! you were better not,” said Paullus, gravely;
“besides, you can get one just like this, without risking
any thing. Volero, the cutler, in the Sacred Way, near
Vesta's temple, has one precisely like to this for sale.
He made this too, he tells me; though he will not tell me
to whom he sold it; but that shall soon be got out of him,
notwithstanding.”

“Ha! are you so anxious in the matter? it would
oblige you, then, if I should confess myself the loser!
Well, I don't want to buy another; I want this very one.
I believe I must claim it.”

He spoke with an emphasis so singular; impressive, and
at the same time half-derisive, and with so strangely-meaning
an expression, that Paullus indeed scarcely knew what
to think; but, in the mean time, he had recovered his own
self-possession, and merely answered—

“I think you had better not; it would perhaps be
dangerous!”

“Dangerous? Ha! that is another motive. I love
danger! verily, I believe I must; yes! I must claim it.”

“What!” exclaimed Paullus, turning pale from excitement;
“Is it yours? Do you say that it is yours?”

“Look! look!” exclaimed Catiline, springing to his
feet; “here they come, here they come now; this is the last

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

round. By the gods! but they are gallant horses, and
well matched! See how the bay courser stretches himself,
and how quickly he gathers! The bay! the bay has it for
five hundred sesterces!”

“I wager you,” said a dissolute-looking long-haired
youth; “I wager you five hundred, Catiline. I say the
gray horse wins.”

“Be it so, then,” shouted Catiline; “the bay, the bay!
spur, spur, Aristius Fuscus, Aurelius gains on you; spur,
spur!”

“The gray, the gray! There is not a horse in Rome can
touch Aurelius Victor's gray South-wind!” replied the
other.

And in truth, Victor's Gallic courser repaid his master's
vaunts; for he made, though he had seemed beat, so desperate
a rally, that he rushed past the bay Arab almost at
the goal, and won by a clear length amidst the roars of
the glad spectators.

“I have lost, plague on it!” exclaimed Catiline; “and
here is Clodius expects to be paid on the instant, I'll be
sworn.”

And as he spoke, the debauchee with whom he had
betted came up, holding his left hand extended, tapping
its palm with the forefinger of the right.

“I told you so,” he said, “I told you so; where be the
sesterces?”

“You must needs wait a while; I have not my purse
with me,” Catiline began. But Paullus interrupted him—

“I have, I have, my Sergius; permit me to accommodate
you.” And suiting the action to the word, he gave
the conspirator several large gold coins, adding, “you can
repay me when it suits you.”

“That will be never,” said Clodius with a sneer; “you
don't know Lucius Catiline, I see, young man.”

“Ay, but he does!” replied the other, with a sarcastic
grin; “for Catiline never forgets a friend, or forgives a
foe. Can Clodius say the same?”

But Clodius merely smiled, and walked off, clinking the
money he had won tauntingly in his hand.

“What now, I wonder, is the day destined to bring
forth?” said the conspirator, making no more allusion to
the dagger.

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

“A contest now between myself, Aristius, and Aurelius,
in the five games of the quinquertium, and then a foot
race in the heaviest panoply.”

“Ha! can you beat them?” asked Catiline, regarding
Arvina with an interest that grew every moment keener,
as he saw more of his strength and daring spirit.

“I can try.”

“Shall I bet on you?”

“If you please. I can beat them in some, I think; and,
as I said, I will try in all.”

More words followed, for Paullus hastened away to
strip and anoint himself for the coming struggle; and in
a little while the strife itself succeeded.

To describe this would be tedious; but suffice it, that
while he won decidedly three games of the five, Paullus
was beat in none; and that in the armed foot race, the
most toilsome and arduous exercise of the Campus, he
not only beat his competitors with ease; but ran the
longest course, carrying the most ponderous armature and
shield, in shorter time than had been performed within
many years on the Field of Mars.

Catiline watched him eagerly all the while, inspecting
him as a purchaser would a horse he was about to buy;
and then, muttering to himself, “We must have him!”
walked up to join him as he finished the last exploit.

“Will you dine with me, Paullus,” he said, “to-day,
and meet the loveliest women you can see in Rome, and
no prudes either?”

“Willingly,” he replied; “but I must swim first in the
Tiber!”

“Be it so, there is time enough; I will swim also.”
And they moved down in company toward the river.

eaf146v1.n7

[7] The Quinquertium, the same as the Greek Pentathlon, was a conflict
in five successive exercises—leaping, the discus, the foot race, throwing
the spear, and wrestling.

CHAPTER VI. THE FALSE LOVE.

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

About three hours later than the scene in the Campus
Martius, which had occurred a little after noon, Catiline
was standing richly dressed in a bright saffron[12] robe, something
longer than the ordinary tunic, flowered with springs
of purple, in the inmost chamber of the woman's apartments,
in his own heavily mortgaged mansion. His wife,
Aurelia Orestilla, sat beside him on a low stool, a woman
of the most superb and queenly beauty—for whom it was
believed that he had plunged himself into the deepest
guilt—and still, although past the prime of Italian womanhood,
possessing charms that might well account for the
most insane passion.

A slave was listening with watchful and half terrified
attention to the injunctions of his lord—for Catiline was an
unscrupulous and severe master—and, as he ceased speaking,
he made a deep genuflexion and retired.

No sooner had he gone than Catiline turned quickly to
the lady, whose lovely face wore some marks of displeasure,
and said rather shortly,

“You have not gone to her, my Aurelia. There is no
time to lose; the young man will be here soon, and if they
meet, ere you have given her the cue, all will be lost.”

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

“I do not like it, my Sergius,” said the woman, rising,
but making no movement to leave the chamber.

“And why not, I beseech you, madam?” he replied
angrily; “or what is there in that which I desire you to
tell the girl to do, that you have not done twenty times
yourself, and Fulvia, and Sempronia, and half Rome's noblest
ladies? Tush! I say, tush! go do it.”

“She is my daughter, Sergius,” answered Aurelia, in a
tone of deep tenderness; “a daughter's honor must be
something to every mother!”

“And a son's life to every father!” said Catiline with
a fierce sneer. “I had a son once, I remember. You wished
to enter an [13]empty house on the day of your marriage
feast. I do not think you found him in your way! Besides,
for honor—if I read Lucia's eyes rightly, there is not
much of that to emperil.”

When he spoke of his son, she covered her face in her
richly jewelled hands, and a slight shudder shook her
whole frame. When she looked up again, she was pale
as death, and her lips quivered as she asked—

“Must I, then? Oh! be merciful, my Sergius.”

“You must, Aurelia!” he replied sternly, “and that
now. Our fortunes, nay, our lives, depend on it!”

“All—must she give all, Lucius?”

“All that he asks! But fear not, he shall wed her, when
our plans shall be crowned with triumph?”

“Will you swear it?”

“By all the Gods! he shall! by all the Furies, if you
will, by Earth, and Heaven, and Hades!”

“I will go,” she replied, something reassured, “and
prepare her for the task!”

“The task!” he muttered with his habitual sneer.
“Daintily worded, fair one; but it will not, I fancy, prove
a hard one; Paullus is young and handsome; and our soft
Lucia has, methinks, something of her mother's yielding
tenderness.'

“Do you reproach me with it, Sergius?”

“Nay! rather I adore thee for it, loveliest one; but go
and prepare our Lucia.” Then, as she left the room, the
dark scowl settled down on his black brow, and he clinched
his hand as he said—

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

“She waxes stubborn—let her beware! She is not
half so young as she was; and her beauty wanes as fast as
my passion for it; let her beware how she crosses me!”

While he was speaking yet a slave entered, and announced
that Paullus Cæcilius Arvina had arrived, and
Curius, and the noble Fulvia; and as he received the tidings
the frown passed away from the brow of the conspirator,
and putting on his mask of smooth, smiling dissimulation,
he went forth to meet his guests.

They were assembled in the tablinum, or saloon, Arvina
clad in a violet colored tunic, sprinkled with flowers in
their natural hues, and Curius—a slight keen-looking man,
with a wild, proud expression, giving a sort of interest to
a countenance haggard from the excitement of passion, in
one of rich crimson, fringed at the wrists and neck with
gold. Fulvia, his paramour, a woman famed throughout
Rome alike for her licentiousness and beauty, was hanging
on his arm, glittering with chains and carcanets, and
bracelets of the costliest gems, in her fair bosom all too
much displayed for a matron's modesty; on her round dazzling
arms; about her swan-like neck; wreathed in the profuse
tresses of her golden hair—for she was that unusual
and much admired being, an Italian blonde—and, spanning
the circumference of her slight waist. She was, indeed,
a creature exquisitely bright and lovely, with such an air of
mild and angelic candor pervading her whole face, that you
would have sworn her the most innocent, the purest of her
sex. Alas! that she was indeed almost the vilest! that she was
that rare monster, a woman, who, linked with every crime
and baseness that can almost unsex a woman, preserves
yet in its height, one eminent and noble virtue, one half-redeeming
trait amidst all her infamy, in her proud love of
country! Name, honor, virtue, conscience, womanhood,
truth, piety, all, all, were sacrificed to her rebellious passions.
But to her love of country she could have sacrificed
those very passions! That frail abandoned wretch was
still a Roman—might have been in a purer age a heroine
of Rome's most glorious.

“Welcome, most lovely Fulvia,” exclaimed the host,
gliding softly into the room. “By Mars! the most favored
of immortals! You must have stolen Aphrodite's cestus!
Saw you her ever look so beautiful, my Paullus? You
do well to put those sapphires in your hair, for they wax

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

pale and dim besides the richer azure of your eyes; and
the dull gold in which they are enchased sets off the sparkling
splendor of your tresses. What, Fulvia, know you
not young Arvina—one of the great Cæcilii? By Hercules!
my Curius, he won the best of the quinquertium from
such competitors as Victor and Aristius Fuscus, and ran
twelve stadii, with the heaviest breast-plate and shield in
the armory, quicker than it has been performed since the
days of Licinius Celer. I prithee, know, and cherish him,
my friends, for I would have him one of us. In truth I
would, my Paullus.”

The flattering words of the tempter, and the more fascinating
smiles and glances of the bewitching siren, were
not thrown away on the young noble; and these, with the
soft perfumed atmosphere, the splendidly voluptuous furniture
of the saloon, and the delicious music, which was
floating all the while upon his ears from the blended instruments
and voices of unseen minstrels, conspired to
plunge his senses into a species of effeminate and luxurious
languor, which suited well the ulterior views of Catiline.

“One thing alone has occurred,” resumed the host, after
some moments spent in light jests and trivial conversation,
“to decrease our pleasure: Cethegus was to have
dined with us to-day, and Decius Brutus, with his inimitable
wife Sempronia. But they have disappointed us; and,
save Aurelia only, and our poor little Lucia, there will be
none but ourselves to eat my Umbrian boar.”

“Have you a boar, my Sergius?” exclaimed Curius,
eagerly, who was addicted to the pleasures of the table,
almost as much as the charms of women. “By Pan, the
God of Hunters! we are in luck to-day!”

“But wherefore comes not Sempronia?” inquired
Fulvia, not very much displeased by the absence of a rival
beauty.

“Brutus is called away, it appears, suddenly to Tarentum
upon business; and she”—

“Prefers entertaining our Cethegus, alone in her own
house, I fancy,” interrupted Fulvia.

“Exactly so,” replied Catiline, with a smile of meaning.

“Happy Cethegus,” said Arvina.

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

“Do you think her so handsome?” asked Fulvia, favoring
him with one of her most melting glances.

“The handsomest woman,” he replied, “with but one
exception, I ever had the luck to look upon.”

“Indeed!—and pray, who is the exception?” asked the
lady, very tartly.

There happened to be lying on a marble slab, near to the
place where they were standing, a small round mirror of
highly polished steel, set in a frame of tortoiseshell and
gold. Paullus had noticed it before she spoke; and taking
it up without a moment's pause, he raised it to her face.

“Look!” he said, “look into that, and blush at your
question.”

“Prettily said, my Paullus; thy wit is as fleet as thy
foot is speedy,” said the conspirator.

“Flatterer!” whispered the lady, evidently much delighted;
and then, in a lower voice she added, “Do you
indeed think so?”

“Else may I never hope.”

But at this moment the curtains were drawn aside, and
Orestilla entered from the gallery of the peristyle, accompanied
by her daughter Lucia.

The latter was a girl of about eighteen years old, and of
appearance so remarkable, that she must not be passed unnoticed.
In person she was extremely tall and slender,
and at first sight you would have supposed her thin; until
the wavy outlines of the loose robe of plain white linen
which she wore, undulating at every movement of her
form, displayed the exquisite fulness of her swelling bust,
and the voluptuous roundness of all her lower limbs.
Her arms, which were bare to the shoulders, where her
gown was fastened by two studs of gold, were quite unadorned,
by any gem or bracelet, and although beautifully
moulded, were rather slender than full.

Her face did not at first sight strike you more than her
person, as being beautiful; for it was singularly still and
inexpressive when at rest—although all the features were
fine and classically regular—and was almost unnaturally
pale and hueless. The mouth only, had any thing of
warmth, or color, or expression; and what expression there
was, was not pleasing, for although soft and winning, it
was sensual to the last degree.

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

Her manner, however, contradicted this; for she slided
into the circle, with downcast eyes, the long dark silky
lashes only visible in relief against the marble paleness of
her cheek, as if she were ashamed to raise them from the
ground; her whole air being that of a girl oppressed with
overwhelming bashfulness, to an extent almost painful.

“Why, what is this, Aurelia,” exclaimed Catiline, as if
he were angry, although in truth the whole thing was
carefully preconcerted. “Wherefore is Lucia thus strangely
clad? Is it, I pray you, in scorn of our noble guests,
that she wears only this plain morning stola?”

“Pardon her, I beseech you, good my Sergius,” answered
his wife, with a painfully simulated smile; “you
know how over-timid she is and bashful; she had determined
not to appear at dinner, had I not laid my commands
on her. Her very hair, you see, is not braided.”

“Ha! this is ill done, my girl Lucia,” answered Catiline.
“What will my young friend, Arvina, think of you,
who comes hither to-day, for the first time? For Curius
and our lovely Fulvia, I care not so much, seeing they
know your whims; but I am vexed, indeed, that Paullus
should behold you thus in disarray, with your hair thus
knotted like a slave girl's, on your neck.”

“Like a Dryad's, rather, or shy Oread's of Diana's
train—beautiful hair!” replied the youth, whose attention
had been called to the girl by this conversation; and who,
having thought her at first unattractive rather than otherwise,
had now discovered the rare beauties of her lythe
and slender figure, and detected, as he thought, a world
of passion in her serpent-like and sinuous motions.

She raised her eyes to meet his slowly, as he spoke;
gazed into them for one moment, and then, as if ashamed
of what she had done, dropped them again instantly; while
a bright crimson flush shot like a stream of lava over her
pallid face, and neck, and arms; yes, her arms blushed,
and her hands to the finger ends! It was but one moment,
that those large lustrous orbs looked full into his, swimming
in liquid Oriental languor, yet flashing out beams of
consuming fire.

Yet Paullus Arvina felt the glance, like an electrical
influence, through every nerve and artery of his body, and
trembled at its power.

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

It was a minute before he could collect himself enough
to speak to her, for all the rest had moved away a little,
and left them standing together; and when he did so,
his voice faltered, and his manner was so much agitated,
that she must have been blind, indeed, and stupid, not to
perceive it.

And Lucia was not blind nor stupid. No! by the God
of Love! an universe of wild imaginative intellect, an
ocean of strange whirling thoughts, an Etna of fierce and
fiery passions, lay buried beneath that calm, bashful, almost
awkward manner. Many bad thoughts were there,
many unmaidenly imaginings, many ungoverned and most
evil passions; but there was also much that was partly
good; much that might have been all good, and high and
noble, had it been properly directed; but alas! as much
pains had been taken to corrupt and deprave that youthful
understanding, and to inflame those nascent passions,
as are devoted by good parents to developing the former,
and repressing the growth of the latter.

As it was, self indulged, and indulged by others, she
was a creature of impulse entirely, ill regulated and ungovernable.

Intended from the first to be a tool in his own hands,
whenever he might think fit to use her, she had in no case
hitherto run counter to the views of Catiline; because, so
long as his schemes were agreeable to her inclinations,
and favorable to her pleasures, she was quite willing to
be his tool; though by no means unconscious of the fact
that he meant her to be such.

What might be the result should his wishes cross her
own, the arch conspirator had never given himself the
pains to enquire; for, like the greater part of voluptuaries,
regarding women as mere animals, vastly inferior in
mind and intellect to men, he had entirely overlooked her
mental qualifications, and fancied her a being of as small
moral capacity, as he knew her to be of strong physical
organization.

He was mistaken; as wise men often are, and deeply,
perhaps fatally.

There was not probably a girl in all Italy, in all the
world, who would so implicitly have followed his directions,
as long as to do so gratified her passions, and

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

clashed not with her indomitable will, to the sacrifiee of all
principle, and with the most total disregard of right or
wrong, as Lucia Orestilla; but certainly there was not
one, who would have resisted commands, threats, violence,
more pertinaciously or dauntlessly, than the same
Lucia, should her will and his councils ever be set at twain.

While Paullus was yet conversing in an under tone with
this strange girl, and becoming every moment more and
more fascinated by the whole tone of her remarks, which
were free, and even bold, as contrasted with the bashful
air and timid glances which accompanied them, the curtains
of the Tablinum were drawn apart, and a soft symphony
of flutes stealing in from the atrium, announced
that the dinner was prepared.

“My Curius,” exclaimed Catiline, “I must entreat you
to take charge of Fulvia; I had proposed myself that
pleasure, intending that you should escort Sempronia,
and Decius my own Orestilla; but, as it is, we will
each abide by his own lady; and Paullus here will pardon
the youth and rawness of my Lucia.”

“By heaven! I would wish nothing better,” said Curius,
taking Fulvia by the hand, and leading her forward.
“Should you Arvina?”

“Not I, indeed,” replied Paullus, “if Lucia be content.”
And he looked to catch her eye, as he took her soft
hand in his own, but her face remained cold and pale as
marble, and her eye downcast.

As they passed out, however, into the fauces, or passage
leading to the dining-room, Catiline added,

“As we are all, I may say, one family and party, I have
desired the slaves to spread couches only; the ladies will
recline with us, instead of sitting at the board.”

At this moment, did Paullus fancy it? or did that beautiful
pale girl indeed press his fingers in her own? he
could not be mistaken; and yet there was the downcast
eye, the immoveable cheek, and the unsmiling aspect of
the rosy mouth. But he returned the pressure, and that so
significantly, that she at least could not be mistaken; nor
was she, for her eye again met his, with that deep amorous
languid glance; was bashfully withdrawn; and then met
his again, glancing askance through the dark fringed lids,
and a quick flashing smile, and a burning blush

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

followed; and in a second's space she was again as cold, as impassive
as a marble statue.

They reached the triclinium, a beautiful oblong apartment,
gorgeously painted with arabesques of gold and
scarlet upon a deep azure ground work. A circular table,
covered with a white cloth, bordered with a deep edge of
purple and deeper fringe of gold, stood in the centre, and
around it three couches, nearly of the same height with
the board, each the segment of a circle, the three forming
a horse-shoe.

The couches were of the finest rosewood, inlaid with
tortoiseshell and ivory and brass, strewed with the richest
tapestries, and piled with cushions glowing with splendid
needlework. And over all, upheld by richly moulded
shafts of Corinthian bronze, was a canopy of Tyrian purple,
tasselled and fringed with gold.

The method of reclining at the table was, that the guests
should place themselves on the left side, propped partly
by the left elbow and partly by a pile of cushions; each
couch being made to contain in general three persons, the
head of the second coming immediately below the right
arm of the first, and the third in like manner; the body of
each being placed transversely, so as to allow space for
the limbs of the next below in front of him.

The middle place on each couch was esteemed the most
honorable; and the middle couch of the three was that assigned
to guests of the highest rank, the master of the
feast, for the most, occupying the central position on the
third or left hand sofa. The slaves stood round the outer
circuit of the whole, with the cupbearers; but the carver,
and steward, if he might so be termed, occupied that side
of the table which was left open to their attendance.

On this occasion, there being but six guests in all, each
gentleman assisted the lady under his charge to recline,
with her head comfortably elevated, near the centre of
the couch; and then took his station behind her, so that, if
she leaned back, her head would rest on his bosom, while
he was enabled himself to reach the table, and help himself
or his fair partner, as need might be, to the delicacies offered
in succession.

Curius and Fulvia, he as of senatorial rank, and she as
a noble matron, occupied the highest places; Paullus and

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

Lucia reclined on the right hand couch, and Catiline with
Orestilla in his bosom, as the phrase ran, on the left.

No sooner were they all placed, and the due libation
made of wine, with an offering of salt, to the domestic
Gods—a silver group of statues occupying the centre of
the board, where we should now place the plateau and
epergne, than a louder burst of music ushered in three
beautiful female slaves, in succinct tunics, like that seen
in the sculptures of Diana, with half the bosom bare,
dancing and singing, and carrying garlands in their hands
of roses and myrtle, woven with strips of the philyra,
or inner bark of the linden tree, which was believed to be
a specific against intoxication. Circling around the board,
in time to the soft music, they crowned each of the guests,
and sprinkled with rich perfumes the garments and the hair
of each; and then with more animated and eccentric gestures,
as the note of the flute waxed shriller and more
piercing, they bounded from the banquet hall, and were
succeeded by six boys with silver basins, full of tepid water
perfumed with costly essences, and soft embroidered
napkins, which they handed to every banqueter to wash
the hands before eating.

This done, the music died away into a low faint close,
and was silent; and in the hush that followed, an aged
slave bore round a mighty flask of Chian wine, diluted
with snow water, and replenished the goblets of stained
glass, which stood beside each guest; while another dispensed
bread from a lordly basket of wrought gilded scroll
work.

And now the feast commenced, in earnest; as the first
course, consisting of fresh eggs boiled hard, with lettuce,
radishes, endive and rockets, olives of Venafrum, anchovies
and sardines, and the choicest luxury of the day—hot
sausages served upon gridirons of silver, with the rich
gravy dripping through the bars upon a sauce of Syrian
prunes and pomegranate berries—was placed upon the
board.

For a time there was little conversation beyond the ordinary
courtesies of the table, and such trifling jests as
were suggested by occurrences of the moment. Yet still in
the few words that passed from time to time, Paullus
continued often to convey his sentiments to Lucia in words

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

of double meaning; keenly marked, it is true, but seemingly
unobserved by the wily plotter opposite; and more than
once in handing her the goblet, or loading her plate with
dainties, he took an opportunity again and again of pressing
her not unwilling hand. And still at every pressure he
caught that soft momentary glance, was it of love and
passion, or of mere coquetry and girlish wantonness, succeeded
by the fleeting blush pervading face, neck, arms,
and bosom.

Never had Paullus been so wildly fascinated; his heart
throbbed and bounded as if it would have burst his
breast; his head swam with a sort of pleasurable dizziness;
his eyes were dim and suffused; and he scarce
knew that he was talking, though he was indeed the life
of the whole company, voluble, witty, versatile, and at
times eloquent, so far as the topics of the day gave room
for eloquence.

And now, to the melody of Lydian lutes, two slaves introduced
a huge silver dish, loaded by the vast brawn of
the Umbrian boar, garnished with leaves of chervil, and
floating in a rich sauce of anchovies, the dregs of Coan
wine, white pepper, vinegar, and olives. The carver brandished
his knife in graceful and fantastic gestures, proud
of his honorable task; and as he plunged it into the savory
meat, and the delicious savor rushed up to his nostrils, he
laid down the blade, spread out his hands in an ecstacy,
and cried aloud, “ye Gods, how glorious!”

“Excellent well, my Glycon,” cried Curius, delighted
with the expressive pantomine of the well skilled Greek;
“smells it so savory?”

“I have carved many a boar from Lucania and from
Umbria also; to say nothing of those from the Laurentian
marshes, which are bad, seeing that they are fed on reeds
only and marsh grass; most noble Curius; and never put
I knife into such an one as this. There are two inches on
it of pure fat, softer than marrow. He was fed upon holm
acorns, I'll be sworn, and sweet chesnuts, and caught in a
mild south wind!”

“Fewer words, you scoundrel,” exclaimed Catiline,
laughing at the fellow's volubility, “and quicker carving,
if you wish not to visit the pistrinum. You have set Curius'
mouth watering, so that he will be sped with longing,

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

before you have helped Fulvia and your mistress. Fill up
you knaves, fill up; nay! not the Chian now; the Falernian
from the Faustian hills, or the Cæcuban? Which
shall it be, my Curius?”

“The Cæcuban, by all the Gods! I hold it the best vintage
ever, and yours is curious. Besides, the Falernian is
too dry to drink before the meat. Afterward, if, as Glycon
says, the boar hath a flavor of the south, it will be excellent,
indeed.”

“Are as you as constant, Paullus, in your love for the
boar, as these other epicures?” cried Fulvia, who, despite
the depreciating tone in which she spoke, had sent
her own plate for a second slice.

“No! by the Gods! Fulvia,” he replied, “I am but a
sorry epicure, and I love the boar better in his reedy fen,
or his wild thicket on the Umbrian hills, with his eye glaring
red in rage, and his tusks white with foam, than girt
with condiments and spices upon a golden dish.”

“A strange taste,” said Curius, “I had for my part rather
meet ten on the dining table, than one in the oak woods.”

“Commend me to the boar upon the table likewise,”
said Catiline; “still, with my friend Arvina at my side,
and a good boarspear in my hand, I would like well to
bide the charge of a tusker! It is rare sport, by Hercules!”

“Wonderful beings you men are,” said Fulvia, mincing
her words affectedly, “ever in search of danger; ever on
the alert to kill; to shed blood, even if it be your own! by
Juno, I cannot comprehend it.”

“I can, I can,” cried Lucia, raising her voice for the
first time, so that it could be heard by any others than her
nearest neighbor; “right well can I comprehend it; were
I a man myself, I feel that I should pant for the battle.
The triumph would be more than rapture; and strife,
for its own sake, maddening bliss! Heavens! to see the
gladiators wheel and charge; to see their swords flash in
the sun; and the red blood gush out unheeded; and the
grim faces flushed and furious; and the eyes greedily devouring
the wounds of the foeman, but all unconscious of
their own; and the play of the muscular strong limbs; and
the terrible death grapple! And then the dull hissing sound
of the death stroke; and the voiceless parting of the bold

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

spirit! Ye Gods! ye Gods! it is a joy, to live, and almost
to die for!”

Paullus Arvina looked at her in speechless wonder. The
eyes so wavering and downcast were now fixed, and steady,
and burning with a passionate clear light; there was
a fiery flush on her cheek, not brief and evanescent; her
ripe red mouth was half open, shewing the snow white
teeth biting the lower lip in the excitement of her feelings.
Her whole form seemed to be dilated and more
majestic than its wont.

“Bravo! my girl; well said, my quiet Lucia!” exclaimed
Catiline. “I knew not that she had so much of
mettle in her.”

“You must have thought, then, that I belied my race,”
replied the girl, unblushingly; “for it is whispered that
you are my father, and I think you have looked on blood,
and shed it before now!”

“Boar's blood, ha! Lucia; but you are blunt and brave
to-night. Is it that Paullus has inspired you?”

“Nay! I know not,” she replied, half apathetically;
“but I do know, that if I ever love, it shall be a hero; a
man that would rather lie in wait until dawn to receive
the fierce boar rushing from the brake upon his spear,
than until midnight to enfold a silly girl in his embrace.”

“Then will you never love me, Lucia,” answered
Curius.

“Never, indeed!” said she; “it must be a man whom
I will love; and there is nothing manly about thee, save
thy vices!”

“It is for those that most people love me,” replied Curius,
nothing disconcerted. “Now Cato has nothing of
the man about him but the virtues; and I should like to
know who ever thought of loving Cato.”

“I never heard of any body loving Cato,” said Fulvia,
quietly.

“But I have,” answered the girl, almost fiercely;
“none of you love him; nor do I love him; because he is
too high and noble, to be dishonored by the love of such as
I am; but all the good, and great, and generous, do love
him, and will love his memory for countless ages! I would
to God, I could love him!”

“What fury has possessed her?” whispered Catiline

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

to Orestilla; “what ails her to talk thus? first to proclaim
herself my daughter, and now to praise Cato?”

“Do not ask me!” replied Aurelia in the same tone;
“she was a strange girl ever; and I cannot say, if she likes
this task that you have put upon her.”

“More wine, ho! bring more wine! Drink we each
man to his mistress, each lady to her lover in secrecy and
silence!” cried the master of the revel. “Fill up! fill up!
let it be pure, and sparkling to the brim.”

But Fulvia, irritated a little by what had passed, would
not be silent; although she saw that Catiline was annoyed
at the character the conversation had assumed, and ere
the slave had filled up the beakers she addressed Lucia—

“And wherefore, dearest, would you love Cato? I
could as soon love the statue of Accius Nævius, with his
long beard, on the steps of the Comitium; he were scarce
colder, or less comely than your Cato.”

“Because to love virtue is still something, if we be vicious
even; and, if I am not virtuous myself, at least I
have not lost the sense that it were good to be so!”

“I never knew that you were not virtuous, my Lucia,”
interposed her mother; “affectionate and pious you have
ever been.”

“And obedient!” added Catiline, with strong emphasis.
“Your mother, my Lucia, and myself, return thanks
to the Gods daily for giving us so good a child.”

“Do you?” replied the girl, scornfully; “the Gods must
have merry times, then, for that must needs make them
laugh! But good or bad, I respect the great; and, if I
ever love, it will be, as I said, a great and a good man.”

“I fear you will never love me, Lucia,” whispered Paullus
in her ear, unheard amid the clash of knives and flagons,
and the pealing of a fresh strain of music, which ushered
in the king of fish, the grand conger, garnished with prawns
and soused in pungent sauce.

“Wherefore not?” she replied, meeting his eye with a
furtive sidelong glance.

“Because I, for one, had rather watch till midnight fifty
times, in the hope only of clasping Lucia, once, in my
embrace; than once until dawn, to kill fifty boars of
Umbria.”

She made no answer; but looked up into his face as if

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

to see whether he was in earnest, with an affectionate and
pleading glance; and then pressed her unsandalled foot
against his. A moment or two afterward, he perceived
the embroidered table cover had been drawn up, with the
intent of protecting her dress from the sauces of the fish
which she was eating, in such a manner as to conceal the
greater part of her person.

Observing this, and excited beyond all restraint of ordinary
prudence, by the consciousness of her manner, he
profited by the chance to steal his arm about her waist;
and to his surprise, almost as much as his delight, he felt
his hand clasped instantly in hers, and pressed upon her
throbbing heart.

The blood gushed like molten fire through his veins.
The fascinations of the siren had prevailed. The voice of
the charmer had been heard, charming him but too wisely.
And for the moment, fool that he was, he fancied he
loved Lucia, and his own pure and innocent and lovely
Julia was forgotten! Forgotten, and for whom!

Catiline had not lost one word, one movement of the
young couple; and he perceived, that, although there was
clearly something at work in the girl's bosom which he
did not comprehend, she had at least obeyed his commands
in captivating Paullus; and he now doubted not but
she would persevere, from vanity or passion, and bind him
down a fettered captive to her will.

Determined to lose nothing by want of exertion, the
traitor circulated now the fiery goblet as fast as possible,
till every brain was heated more or less, and every cheek
flushed, even of the women, by the inspiring influence of
the wine cup.

All dainties that were known in those days ministered
to his feast; oysters from Baiæ; pheasants—a rarity but
lately introduced, since Pompey's conquests in the east—
had been brought all the way from Phasis upon the southern
shores of the Black Sea; and woodcock from the valleys
of Ionia, and the watery plains of Troas, to load the
tables of the luxurious masters of the world. Livers of
geese, forced to an unnatural size by cramming the unhappy
bird with figs; and turbot fricasseed in cream, and
peacocks stuffed with truffles, were on the board of Catiline
that day, as on the boards of many another noble

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

Roman; and the wines by which these rare dainties were
diluted, differed but little, as wisest critics say, from the
madeiras and the sherries of the nineteenth century. For
so true is it, that under the sun there is nothing new, that
in the foix gras of Strasburg, in the turbot à la crême, and
in the dindons aux truffes of the French metropolis, the
gastronomes of modern days have only reproduced the
dishes, whereon Lucullus and Hortensius feasted before
the Christian era.

The day passed pleasantly to all, but to Paullus Arvina
it flew like a dream, like a delirious trance, from which,
could he have consulted his own will, he would never have
awakened.

With the dessert, and the wine cup, the myrtle branch
and the lute went round, and songs were warbled by sweet
voices, full of seductive thoughts and words of passion. At
length the lamps were lighted, and the women arose to quit
the hall, leaving the ruder sex to prolong the revel; but
as Lucia rose, she again pressed the fingers of Arvina, and
whispered a request that he would see her once more ere
he left the house.

He promised; but as he did so, his heart sank within
him; for dearly as he wished it, he believed he had promised
that which would prove impossible.

But in a little while, chance, as he thought it, favored
him; for seeing that he refused the wine cup, Catiline,
after rallying him some time, good humoredly said with a
laugh, “Come, my Arvina, we must not be too hard on
you. You have but a young head, though a stout one.
Curius and I are old veterans of the camp, old revellers,
and love the wine cup better than the bright eyes of beauty,
or the minstrel's lute. Thou, I will swear it, wouldst
rather now be listening to Lucia's lyre, and may be fingering
it thyself, than drinking with us roisterers! Come,
never blush, boy, we were all young once! Confess, if I
am right! The women you will find, if you choose to seek
them, in the third chamber on the left, beyond the inner
peristyle. We all love freedom here; nor are we rigid
censors. Curius and I will drain a flagon or two more,
and then join you.”

Muttering something not very comprehensible about his
exertions in the morning, and his inability to drink any

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

more, Paullus arose, delighted to effect his escape on terms
so easy, and left the triclinium immediately in quest of his
mistress.

As he went out, Catiline burst into one of his sneering
laughs, and exclaimed, “He is in; by Pan, the hunter's
God! he is in the death-toil already! May I perish ill, if
he escape it.”

“Why, in the name of all the Gods, do you take so
much pains with him,” said Curius; “he is a stout fellow,
and I dare say a brave one; and will make a good legionary,
or an officer perhaps; but he is raw, and a fool to
boot!”

“Raw, but no fool! I can assure you,” answered Catiline;
“no more a fool than I am. And we must have him,
he is necessary!”

“He will be necessary soon to that girl of yours; she
has gone mad, I think, for love of him. I never did believe
in philtres; but this is well nigh enough to make one
do so.”

“Pshaw!” answered Catiline; “it is thou that art raw
now, and a fool, Curius. She is no more in love with
him than thou art; it was all acting—right good acting:
for it did once well nigh deceive me who devised it; but
still, only acting. I ordered her to win him at all hazards.”

“At all hazards?”

“Aye! at all.”

“I wish you would give her the like orders touching
me, if she obey so readily.”

“I would, if it were necessary; which it is not. First,
because I have you as firmly mine, as need be; and
secondly, because Fulvia would have her heart's blood
ere two days had gone, and that would ill suit me; for
the sly jade is useful.”

“Take care she prove not too sly for you, Sergius.
She may obey your orders in this thing; but she does so
right willingly. She loves the boy, I tell you, as madly
as Venus loved Adonis, or Phædra Hyppolitus; she would
pursue him if he fled from her.”

“She loves him no more than she loves the musty statue
of my stout grandsire, Sergius Silo.”

“You will see one day. Meanwhile, look that she fool
you not.”

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

While they were speaking, Paullus had reached the
entrance of the chamber indicated; and, opening the door,
had entered, expecting to find the three women assembled
at some feminine sport or occupation. But fortune again
favored him—opportune fortune!

For Lucia was alone, expecting him, prepared for his
entrance at any moment; yet, when he came, how unprepared,
how shocked, how terrified!

For she had unclasped her stola upon both her shoulders,
and suffered it to fall down to her girdle which kept it in
its place about her hips. But above those she was dressed
only in a tunic of that loose fabric, a sort of silken gauze,
which was called woven air, and was beginning to be worn
very much by women of licentious character; this dress—
if that indeed could be called a dress, which displayed all
the outlines of the shape, all the hues of the glowing skin
every minute blue vein that meandered over the lovely
bosom—was wrought in alternate stripes of white and silver;
and nothing can be imagined more beautiful than
the effect of its semi-transparent veil concealing just enough
to leave some scope for the imagination, displaying more
than enough for the most prodigal of beauty.

She was employed in dividing her long jet-black hair
with a comb of mother-of-pearl as he entered; but she
dropped both the hair and comb, and started to her feet
with a simulated scream, covering her beautiful bust with
her two hands, as if she had been taken absolutely by surprise.

But Paullus had been drinking freely, and Paullus saw,
moreover, that she was not offended; and, if surprised,
surprised not unpleasantly by his coming.

He sprang forward, caught her in his arms, and clasping
her to his bosom almost smothered her with kisses.
But shame on her, fast and furiously as he kissed, she
kissed as closely back.

“Lucia, sweet Lucia, do you then love me?”

“More than my life—more than my country—more than
the Gods! my brave, my noble Paullus.”

“And will you then be mine—all mine, my Lucia?”

“Yours, Paul?” she faltered, panting as if with agitation
upon his bosom; “am I not yours already? but no, no, no!”
she exclaimed, tearing herself from his embrace. “No

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

no! I had forgotten. My father! no; I cannot, my father!”

“What mean you, Lucia? your father? What of your
father?”

“You are his enemy. You have discovered, will betray
him.”

“No, by the great Gods! you are mad, Lucia. I have
discovered nothing; nor if I knew him to be the slayer
of my father, would I betray him! never, never!”

“Will you swear that?”

“Swear what?”

“Never, whatever you may learn, to betray him to any
living man: never to carry arms, or give evidence against
him; but faithfully and stedfastly to follow him through
virtue and through vice, in life and unto death; to live
for him, and die with him, unless I release you of your oath
and restore you to freedom, which I will never do!”

“By all the powers of light and darkness! by Jupiter
Omnipotent, and Pluto the Avenger, I swear, Lucia! May
I and all my house, and all whom I love or cherish, wretchedly
perish if I fail you.”

“Then I am yours,” she sighed; “all, and for ever!” and
sank into his arms, half fainting with the violence of that
prolonged excitement.

eaf146v1.n12

[12] The guests at Roman banquets usually brought their own napkins,
inappæ, and wore robes of bright colors, usually flowered, called cænatoriæ
or cubitoriæ.

CHAPTER VII. THE OATH.

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

The evening had worn on to a late hour, and darkness
had already fallen over the earth, when Paullus issued
stealthily, like a guilty thing, from Lucia's chamber. No
step or sound had come near the door, no voice had called
on either, though they had lingered there for hours in
endearments, which, as he judged the spirit of his host,
would have cost him his life, if suspected; and though he
never dreamed of connivance, he did think it strange that
a man so wary and suspicious as Catiline was held to be,
should have so fallen from his wonted prudence, as to betray
his adopted daughter's honor by granting this most
fatal opportunity.

He met no member of the family in the dim-lighted
peristyle; the passages were silent and deserted; no gay
domestic circle was collected in the tablinum, no slaves
were waiting in the atrium; and, as he stole forth cautiously
with guarded footsteps, Arvina almost fancied that
he had been forgotten; and that the master of the house
believed him to have retired when he left the dining hall.

It was not long, however, before he was undeceived;
for as he entered the vestibule, and was about to lay his

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

hand on the lock of the outer door, a tall dark figure,
which he recognized instantly to be that of his host, stepped
forward from a side-passage, and stretched out his
arm in silence, forbidding him, by that imperious gesture,
to proceed.

“Ha! you have tarried long,” he said in a deep guarded
whisper, “our Lucia truly is a most soft and fascinating
creature; you found her so, is it not true, my Paullus?”

There was something singular in the manner in which
these words were uttered, half mocking, and half serious;
something between a taunting and triumphant assertion
of a fact, and a bitter question; but nothing that betokened
anger or hostility, or offended pride in the speaker.

Still Paullus was so much taken by surprise, and so
doubtful of his entertainer's meaning, and the extent of
his knowledge, that he remained speechless in agitated and
embarrassed silence.

“What, have the girl's kisses clogged your lips, so that
they can give out no sound? By the gods! they were
close enough to do so.”

“Catiline!” he exclaimed, starting back in astonishment,
and half expecting to feel a dagger in his bosom.

“Tush! tush! young man—think you the walls in the
house of Catiline have no ears, nor eyes? Paullus Arvina,
I know all!”

“All?” faltered the youth, now utterly aghast.

“Ay, all!” replied the conspirator, with a harsh triumphant
laugh. “Lucia has given herself to you; and
you have sold yourself to Catiline! By all the fiends of
Hades, better it were for you, rash boy, that you had ne'er
been born, than now to fail me!”

Arvina, trembling with the deep consciousness of hospitality
betrayed, and feeling the first stings of remorse already,
stood thunderstricken, and unable to articulate.

“Speak!” thundered Catiline; “speak! art thou not
mine—mine soul and body—sworn to be mine forever?”

Alas! the fatal oath, sworn in the heat of passion, flashed
on his soul, and he answered humbly, and in a faint low
voice, how different from his wonted tones of high and
manly confidence—

“I am sworn, Catiline!”

“See then that thou be not forsworn. Little thou

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

dream'st yet, unto what thou art sworn, or unto whom;
but know this, that hell itself, with all its furies, would fall
short of the tortures that await the traitor!”

“I am, at least, no traitor!”

“No! traitor! Ha!” cried Catiline, “is it an honest
deed to creep into the bosom of a daughter of the house
which entertained thee as a friend!—No! Traitor—ha!
ha! ha! thou shalt ere long learn better—ha! ha! ha!”

And he laughed with the fearful sneering mirth, which
was never excited in his breast, but by things perilous and
terrible and hateful. In a moment, however, he repressed
his merriment, and added—

“Give me that poniard thou didst wear this morning. It
is mine.”

“Thine!” cried the unhappy youth, starting back, as if
he had received a blow; “thine, Catiline!”

“Aye!” he replied, in a hoarse voice, looking into the
very eyes of Paul. “I am the slayer of the slave, and regret
only that I slew him without torture. Know you whose
slave he was, by any chance?”

“He was the Consul's slave,” answered Arvina, almost
mechanically—for he was utterly bewildered by all that had
passed—“Medon, my freedman Thrasea's cousin.”

“The Consul's, ha!—which Consul's? speak! fool!
speak, ere I tear it from your throat; Cicero's, ha?”

“Cicero's, Catiline!”

“Here is a coil; and knows he of this matter? I mean
Cicero.”

“He knows it.”

“That is to say, you told him. Aye! this morning, after
I spoke with you. I comprehend; and you shewed him
the poniard. So! so! so! Well, give it to me; I will
tell you what to do, hereafter.”

“I have it not with me, Sergius,” he replied, thoroughly
daunted and dismayed.

“See that you meet me then, bringing it with you, at
Egeria's cave, as fools call it, in the valley of Muses, at
the fourth hour of night to-morrow. In the meantime, beware
that you tell no man aught of this, nor that the instrument
was bought of Volero. Ha! dost thou hear me?”

“I hear, Catiline.”

“And wilt obey?”

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

“And will obey.”

“So shall it go well with thee, and we shall be fast
friends forever. Good repose to thee, good my Paullus.”

“And Lucia?” he replied, but in a voice of inquiry;
for all that he had heard of the tremendous passions and
vindictive fury of the conspirator, flashed on his mind, and
he fancied that he knew not what of vengeance would fall
on the head of the soft beauty.

“Hath played her part rarely!” answered the monster,
as he dismissed him from the door, which he opened with
his own hand. “Be true, and you shall see her when you
will; betray us, and both you and she shall live in agonies,
that shall make you call upon death fifty times, ere
he relieve you.”

And with a menacing gesture, he closed and barred the
door behind him.

“Played her part rarely!” The words sank down into
his soul with a chilling weight, that seemed to crush every
energy and hope. Played her part! Then he was a dupe—
the very dupe of the fiend's arch mock, to lip a wanton,
and believe her chaste—the dupe of a designing harlot;
the sworn tool and slave of a murderer—a monster, who
had literally sold his own child's honor. For all the world
well knew, that, although Lucia passed for his adopted
daughter only, she was his natural offspring by Aurelia
Orestilla, before their impious marriage.

Well might he gnash his teeth, and beat his breast, and
tear his dark hair by handfulls from his head; well might
he groan and curse.

But oh! the inconsistency of man! While he gave vent
to all the anguish of his rage in curses against her, the soft
partner of his guilt, and at the same time, its avenger;
against the murderer and the traitor, now his tyrant; he
utterly forgot that his own dereliction, from the paths of
rectitude and honor, had led him into the dark toils, in
which he now seemed involved beyond any hope of extrication.

He forgot, that to satisfy an insane and unjustifiable love
of adventure, and a false curiosity, he had associated himself
with a man whom he believed, if he did not actually
know, to be infamous and capable of any crime.

He forgot, that, admitted into that man's house in

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

friendship, he had attempted to undermine his daughter's honor;
and had felt no remorse, till he learned that his success
was owing to connivance—that his own treason had been
met and repaid by deeper treason.

He forgot, that for a wanton's love, he had betrayed the
brightest, and the purest being that drew the breath of
life, from the far Alps, to the blue waters of the far Tarentum—
that he had broken his soul's plighted faith—that
he was himself, first, a liar, perjurer, and villain.

Alas! it is the inevitable consequence, the first fruit, as
it were, of crime, that guilt is still prolific; that the commission
of the first ill deed, leads almost surely to the commission
of a second, of a third, until the soul is filed and
the heart utterly corrupted, and the wretch given wholly
up to the dominion of foul sin, and plunged into thorough
degradation.

Arvina had thought lightly, if at all, of his first luxurious
sin, but now to the depth of his secret soul, he felt that he
was emmeshed and entangled in the deepest villainy.

All that he ever had yet heard hinted darkly or surmised
of Catiline's gigantic schemes of wickedness, rushed on
him, all at once! He doubted nothing any longer; it was
clear to him as noonday; distinct and definite as if it had
been told to him in so many words; the treason to the
state concealed by individual murder; and he, a sworn accomplice—
nay, a sworn slave to this murderer and traitor!

Nor was this all; his peril was no less than his guilt;
equal on either side—sure ruin if he should be true to his
country, and scarce less sure, if he should join its parricides.
For, though he had not dared say so much to Catiline,
he had already sent the poniard to the house of Cicero,
and a brief letter indicating all that he had learned from
Volero. This he had done in the interval between the
Campus and his unlucky visit to the house of Catiline,
whom he then little deemed to be the man of whom he
was in quest.

Doubtless, ere this time, the cutler had been summoned
to the consul's presence, and the chief magistrate of the
Republic had learned that the murderer of his slave was
the very person, whom he had bound himself by oaths, so
strong that he shuddered at the very thought of them, to
support and defend to the utmost.

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

What was he then to do? how to proceed, since to recede
appeared impossible?

How was he to account to the conspirator for his inability
to produce the poniard at their appointed meeting?
how should he escape the pursuit of his determined vengeance,
if he should shun the meeting?

And then, Lucia! The recollection, guilty and degraded
as he knew her to be, of her soft blandishments, of her
rare beauty, of her wild and inexplicable manner, adding
new charms to that forbidden bliss, yet thrilled in every
sense. And must he give her up? No! madness was in the
very thought! so strangely had she spread her fascinations
round him. And yet did he love her? no! perish the
thought! Love is a high, a holy, a pure feeling—the purest
our poor fallen nature is capable of experiencing; no! this
fierce, desperate, guilty passion was no more like true love,
than the whirlwind that upheaves the tortured billows, and
hurls the fated vessel on the treacherous quicksands, is like
to the beneficent and gentle breeze that speeds it to the haven
of its hopes, in peace and honor.

After a little while consumed in anxious and uneasy
thoughts, he determined—as cowards of the mind determine
ever—to temporise, to await events, to depend upon
the tide of circumstance. He would, he thought, keep the
appointment with his master—for such he felt that Catiline
now was indeed—however he might strive to conceal
the fact; endeavor to learn what were his real objects; and
then determine what should be his own course of action.
Doubtful, and weak of principle, and most infirm of purpose,
he shrunk alike from breaking the oath he had been
entrapped into taking, and from committing any crime
against his country.

His country!—To the Roman, patriotism stood for religion!—
Pride, habit, education, honor, interest, all were
combined in that word, country; and could he be untrue
to Rome? His better spirit cried out, no! from every
nerve and artery of his body. And then his evil genius
whispered Lucia, and he wavered.

Meantime, had no thought crossed him of his own pure
and noble Julia, deserted thus and overlooked for a mere
wanton? Many times! many times, that day, had his
mind reverted to her. When first he went to Cataline's

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

house, he went with the resolution of leaving it at an
early hour, so soon as the feast should be over, and seeking
her, while there should yet be time to ramble among the
flower-beds on the hill of gardens, or perchance, to drive
out in his chariot, which he had ordered to be held in
readiness, toward the falls of the Anio, or on the proud
Emilian way.

Afterward, in the whirl of his mad intoxication for the
fascinating Lucia, all memory of his true love was lost,
as the chaste moon-light may be dimmed and drowned for
a while by the red glare of the torches, brandished in some
licentious orgy. Nor did he think of her again, till he
found himself saddened, and self-disgusted, plunged into
peril—perhaps into ruin, by his own guilty conduct; and
then, when he did think, it was with remorse, and self-reproach,
and consciousness of disloyalty, so bitterly and keenly
painful—yet unaccompanied by that repentance, which
steadily envisages past wrong, and determines to amend in
future—that he shook off the recollection, whenever it returned,
with wilful stubbornness; and resolved on forgetting,
for the present, the being whom a few short hours before,
he would have deemed it impossible that he should
ever think of but with joy and rapturous anticipation.

Occupied in these fast succeeding moods and fancies,
Paullus had made his way homeward from the house of
Catiline, so far as to the Cerolian place, at the junction of
the Sacred Way and the Carinæ. He paused here a moment;
and grasping his fevered brow with his hand, recalled
to mind the strange occurrences, most unexpected and
unfortunate, which had befallen him, since he stood there
that morning; each singly trivial; each, unconnected as it
seemed with the rest, and of little moment; yet all, when
united, forming a chain of circumstances by which he was
now fettered hand and foot—his casual interview with
Catiline on the hill; his subsequent encounter of Victor
and Aristius Fuscus; the recognition of his dagger by the
stout cutler Volero; the death of Varus in the hippodrome;
his own victorious exercises on the plain; the invitation
to the feast; the sumptuous banquet; and last, alas! and
most fatal, the too voluptuous and seductive Lucia.

Just at this moment, the doors of Cicero's stately mansion
were thrown open, and a long train came sweeping

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

out in dark garments, with blazing torches, and music
doleful and piercing. And women chanting the shrill funereal
strain. And then, upon a bier covered with black, the
rude wooden coffin, peculiar to the slave, of the murdered
Medon! Behind him followed the whole household of the
Consul; and last, to the extreme astonishment of Paullus,
preceded by his lictors, and leaning on the arm of his
most faithful freedman, came Cicero himself, doing unusual
honor, for some cause known to himself alone, to the
manes of his slaughtered servant.

As they passed on toward the Capuan gate of the city,
the Consul's eyes fell directly on the form of Arvina,
where he stood revealed in the full glare of the torch-light;
and as he recognised him, he made a sign that he should
join him, which, under those peculiar circumstances, he
felt that he could not refuse to do.

Sadly and silently they swept through the splendid
streets, and under the arched gate, and filed along the celebrated
Appian way, passing the tomb of the proud Scipios
on the left hand, with its superb sarcophagi—for that great
house had never, from time immemorial, been wont to burn
their dead—and on the right, a little farther on, the noble
temple and the sacred slope of Mars, and the old statue of
the god which had once sweated blood, prescient of Thrasymene.
On they went, frightening the echoes of the quiet
night with their wild lamentations and the clapping of
their hands, sending the glare of their funereal torches far
and wide through the cultured fields and sacred groves and
rich gardens, until they reached at length the pile, hard
by the columbarium, or slave-burying-place of Cicero's
household.

Then, the rites performed duly, the dust thrice sprinkled
on the body, and the farewell pronounced, the corpse was
laid upon the pile, and the tall spire of blood-red flame
went up, wavering and streaming through the night, rich
with perfumes, and gums, and precious ointment, so noble
was the liberality of the good Consul, even in the interment
of his more faithful slaves.

No words were uttered to disturb the sound of the ceremony,
until the flames died out, and, the smouldering embers
quenched with wine, Thrasea, as the nearest relative
of the deceased, gathered the ashes and inurned them,

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

when they were duly labelled and consigned to their
niche in the columbarium; and then, the final Ilicet pronounced,
the sad solemnity was ended.

Then, though not until then, did Cicero address the
young man; but then, as if to make up for his previous
silence, he made him walk by his side all the way back to
the city, conversing with him eagerly about all that had
passed, thanking him for the note and information he had
sent concerning Volero, and anticipating the immediate
discovery of the perpetrators of that horrid crime.

“I have not had the leisure to summon Volero before
me,” he added. “I wished also that you, Arvina, should
be present when I examine him. I judge that it will be
best, when we shall have dismissed all these, except the
lictors, to visit him this very night. He is a thrifty and
laborious artisan, and works until late by lamp light; we
will go thither, if you have naught to hinder you, at once.”

Arvina could do no otherwise than assent; but his
heart beat violently, and he could scarcely frame his words,
so dreadful was his agitation. Yet, by dint of immense exertion,
he contrived to maintain the outward appearance
of composure, which he was very far from feeling, and even
to keep up a connected conversation as they walked along.
Returning home at a much quicker pace than they had
gone out, it was comparatively but a short time before
they arrived at the house of Cicero, and there dismissed
their followers, many of the slaves and freedmen of Arvina
having joined the procession in honour of their fellow-servant
Thrasea.

Thence, reserving two lictors only of the twelve, the
consul with his wonted activity hurried directly forward
by the Sacred Way to the arch of Fabius; and then, as
the young men had gone in the morning, through the
Forum toward the cutler's shop, taking the shortest way,
and evidently well acquainted with the spot beforehand.

“I caused the funeral to take place this night,” he said
to Arvina, “instead of waiting the due term of eight days,
on purpose that I might create no suspicion in the minds
of the slayers. They never will suspect him, we have
buried even now, to be the man they slew last night, and
will fancy, it may be, that the body is not discovered
even.”

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

“It will be well if it prove so,” replied Paullus, feeling
that he must say something, and fearful of committing
himself by many words.

“It will, and I think probably it may,” answered Cicero.
“But see, I was right; there shines the light from Volero's
shop, though all the other booths have been closed long
ago, and the streets are already silent. There are but few
men, even in this great city, of whom I know not something,
beyond the mere names. Think upon that, young
man, and learn to do likewise; cultivate memory, above
all things, except virtue.”

“I should have thought such things too mean to occupy
a place, even, in the mind of Cicero,” answered Arvina.

“Nothing, young man, that pertains to our fellow
men, is too mean to occupy the mind of the noblest.
Why should it, since it doth occupy the mind of the
Gods, who are all great and omnipotent?”

“You lean not then to the creed of Epicurus, which
teaches—”

“Who, I?” interrupted Cicero, almost indignantly.
“No! by the immortal Gods! nor I trust, my young
friend, do you. Believe me—but ha!” he added in a quick
and altered tone, “what have we here? there is some villainy
in the wind—away! away! there! lictors apprehend
that fellow.”

For as they came within about a bow-shot of the booth
of Volero, the sound of a slight scuffle was heard from
within, and the light of the lamp became very dim and
wavering, as if it had been overset; and in a moment
went out altogether. But its last glimmering ray shewed
a tall sinewy figure making out of the door and bounding
at a great pace up the street toward the Carmental gate.

Arvina caught but a momentary glance of the figure;
yet was that glance enough. He recognized the spare but
muscular form, all brawn and bone and sinew; he recognized
the long and pardlike bounds!—It was his tyrant,
and, as he thought, his Fate!

The lictors rushed away upon his track, but there
seemed little chance that, encumbered with their heavy
fasces, they would overtake so swift a runner, as, by
the momentary sight they had of him, the fugitive appeared
to be.

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

Arvina and the Consul speedily reached the booth.

“Volero! Volero!”

But there came forth no answer.

“Volero! what ho! Volero!”

They listened eagerly, painfully, with ears sharpened
by excitement. There came a sound—a plash, as of a
heavy drop of water falling on the stone floor; another,
and another—the trickling of a continuous stream.

All was dark as a moonless midnight. Yet Cicero
took one step forward, and laid his hand upon the counter.
It splashed into a pool of some warm liquid.

“Now may the Gods avert!” he cried, “It is blood!
there has been murder here! Run, my Arvina, run to
Furbo's cookshop, across the way there, opposite; they
sit up there all night—cry murder, ho! help! murder!”

A minute had scarcely passed before the heavy knocking
of the young man had aroused the house—the
neighborhood. And at the cry of murder, many men,
some who had not retired for the night, and some half
dressed as they had sprung up from their couches, came
rushing with their weapons, snatched at random, and
with torches in their hands.

It was but too true! the laborious artizan was dead;
murdered, that instant, at his own counter, at his very
work. He had not moved or risen from his seat, but had
fallen forward with his head upon the board; and from
beneath the head was oozing in a continuous stream the
dark red blood, which had overflowed the counter, and
trickled down, and made the paved floor one great pool!

“Ye Gods! what blood! what blood!” exclaimed the
first who came in.

“Poor Volero! alas!” cried Furbo, “it is not an hour
since he supped on a pound of sausages at my table, and
now, all is over!”

They raised his head. His eyes were wide open; and
the whole face bore an expression neither of agony or
terror, so much as of wild surprise.

The throat was cut from ear to ear, dividing the windpipe,
the carotid arteries, and jugular veins on both sides;
and so strong had been the hand of the assassin, and so
keen the weapon, that the neck was severed quite to the
back bone.

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

Among the spectators was a gladiator; he whose especial
task it was to cut the throats of the conquered
victims on the arena; he looked eagerly and curiously
at the wound for a moment, and then said—

“A back stroke from behind—a strong hand, and a
broadbacked knife—the man has been slain by a gladia
tor, or one who knows the gladiator's trick!”

“The man,” said the Consul calmly, “has been killed
by an acquaintance, a friend, or a familiar customer; he
had not even risen from his seat to speak with him;
and see, the burnisher is yet grasped in his hand, with
which he was at work. Ha!” he exclaimed, as his lictors
entered, panting and tired by their fruitless chase, “could
you not overtake him?”

“We never saw him any more, my consul,” replied
both men in one breath.

“Let his head down, my friend,” said Cicero, turning,
much disappointed as it seemed, to Furbo, “let it lie, as it
was when we found it; clear the shop, lictors; take the
names of the witnesses; one of you keep watch at the
door, until you are relieved; lock it and give the key to
the prætor, when he shall arrive; the other, go straightway,
and summon Cornelius Lentulus; he is the præ
tor for this ward. Go to your homes, my friends, and
make no tumult in the streets, I pray you. This shall be
looked to and avenged; your Consul watches over you!”

“Live! live the Consul! the good Consul, the man of
the people!” shouted the crowd, as they dispersed quietly
to their homes.

“Arvina, come with me. To whom told you, that you
had found, and Volero sold, this dagger?” he asked very
sternly.

“To no one, Cicero. Marcus Aurelius Victor, and
Aristius Fuscus were with me, when he recognized it for
his work?”

“No one else?”

“No one, save our slaves, and they,” he added in a
breath, “could not have heard what passed.”

“Hath no one else seen it?”

“As I was stripping for the contests on the Campus,
Catiline saw it in my girdle, and admired its fabric.”

“Catiline!”

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

“Ay! Consul?”

“And you told him that, Volero had made it?”

“Consul, no!” But, with the word, he turned as white
as marble. Had it been daylight, his face had betrayed
him; as it was, Cicero observed that his voice trembled.

“Catiline is the man!” he said solemnly, “the man who
slew Medon yesternight, who has slain Volero now. Catiline
is the man; but this craves wary walking. Young
man, young man, beware! methinks you are on the verge
of great danger. Get thee home to thy bed; and again I
say, Beware!”