Cic.
Good even, Casca; brought you Cæsar home?
Why are you breathless, and why stare you so?

Casc.
Are not you mov'd, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero!
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have riv'd the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threatning clouds:
But never 'till to-night, never 'till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heav'n,

Or else the world, too saucy with the Gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

Cic.
Why, saw you any thing more wonderful?

Casc.
A common slave, you know him well by sight,
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn,
Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.
Besides, (I ha' not since put up my sword)
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glar'd upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me. And there were drawn
Upon a heap, a hundred gastly women
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday, the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Houting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
These are their reasons, they are natural:
For I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.

Cic.
Indeed, it is a strange disposed time:
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
Comes Cæsar to the Capitol to-morrow?

Casc.
He doth: for he did bid Antonius
Send word to you, he would be there to-morrow.

Cic.
Good-night then, Casca; this disturbed sky
Is not to walk in.

Casc.
Farewel, Cicero. [Exit Cicero.

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