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

Casca.
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?

Casca.
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 ghastly 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,
Ev'n 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?

Casca.
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.

Casca.
Farewel, Cicero. [Exit Cicero.

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