[pg 21]CHAPTER III.THE PERIL.Things, bad begun, make strong themselves by ill.Macbeth.Sixteen days had elapsed, since the conspirators were again frustrated at the Consular Comitia.Yet not for that had the arch-traitor withdrawn his foot one hair's breadth from his purpose, or paused one moment in his career of crime and ruin.There is, beyond doubt, a necessity—not as the ancients deemed, supernatural, and the work of fate, but a natural moral necessity—arising from the very quality of crime itself, which spurs the criminal on to new guilt, fresh atrocity.In the dark path of wickedness there is no halting place; the wretched climber must turn his face for ever upward, for ever onward; if he look backward his fall is inevitable, his doom fixed.So was it proved with Catiline. To gain impunity for his first deed of cruelty and blood, another and another were forced on him, until at last, harassed and maddened by the consciousness of untold guilt, his frantic spirit could find no respite, save in the fierce intoxication of excitement, the strange delight of new atrocity.Add to this, that, knowing himself anticipated and discovered, he knew also that if spared for a time by his opponent, it was no lack of will, but lack of opportunity alone to crush him, that held the hands of Cicero inactive.[pg 22]Thus, although for a time the energies of his weaker comrades sank paralysed by the frustration of their schemes, and by the certainty that they were noted and observed even in their most secret hours, his stronger and more vehement spirit found only in the greater danger the greater stimulus to action.Sixteen days had elapsed, and gradually, as the conspirators found that no steps were taken by the government for their apprehension or punishment, they too waxed bolder, and began to fancy, in their insolent presumption, that the republic was too weak or too timid to enforce its own laws upon undoubted traitors.All the causes, moreover, which had urged them at first to councils so desperate, existed undiminished, nay, exaggerated by delay.Their debts, their inability to raise those funds which their boundless profusion rendered necessary, still maddened them; and to these the consciousness of detected guilt, and that "necessity which," in the words of their chief, "makes even the timid brave," were superadded.The people and the Senate, who had all, for a time, been vehemently agitated by a thousand various emotions of anger, fear, anxiety, revenge, forgetting, as all popular bodies are wont to do, the past danger in the present security, were beginning to doubt whether they had not been alarmed at a shadow; and were half inclined to question the existence of any conspiracy, save in the fears of their Consul.It was well for Rome at that hour, that there was still in the commonwealth, a counterpoise to the Democratic Spirit; which, vehement and energetical beyond all others in sudden and great emergencies, is ever restless and impatient of protracted watchfulness and preparation, and lacks that persistency and resolute endurance which seems peculiar to aristocratic constitutions.And now especially were demonstrated these opposite characteristics; for while the lower orders, and the popular portion of the Senate, who had been in the first instance most strenuous in their alarm, and most urgent for strong measures, were now hesitating, doubting, and almost compassionating the culprits, who had fallen under such a load of obloquy, the firmer and more moderate minds, were[pg 23]guarding the safety of the commonwealth in secret, and watching, through their unknown emissaries, every movement of the traitors.It was about twelve o'clock at night, on the eighth day before the Ides, corresponding to our seventh of November, when the Consul was seated alone in the small but sumptuous library, which has been described above, meditating with an anxious and care-worn expression, over some papers which lay before him on the table.No sound had been heard in the house for several hours; all its inhabitants except the Consul only, with the slave who had charge of the outer door, and one faithful freedman, having long since retired to rest.But from without, the wailing of the stormy night-wind rose and fell in melancholy alternations of wild sobbing sound, and breathless silence; and the pattering of heavy rain was distinctly audible on the flat roofs, and in the flooded tank, orimpluvium, which occupied the centre of the hall.It was in one of the lulls of the autumnal storm, that a heavy knock was heard on the pannel of the exterior door, reverberating in long echoes, through the silent vestibule, and the vast colonnades of the Atrium and peristyle.At that dead hour of night, such a summons would have seemed strange in any season: it was now almost alarming.Nor, though he was endowed pre-eminently with that moral strength of mind which is the highest quality of courage, and was by no means deficient in mere physical bravery, did Cicero raise his head from the perusal of his papers, and listen to that unwonted sound, without some symptoms of anxiety and perturbation.So thoroughly acquainted as he was, with the desperate wickedness, the infernal energy, and absolute fearlessness of Catiline, it could not but occur to him instantly, when he heard that unusual summons, at a time when all the innocent world was buried in calm sleep, how easy and obvious a mode of liberation from all danger and restraint, his murder would afford to men so daring and unscrupulous, as those against whom he was playing, for no less a stake than life or death.There was, he well knew, but a single slave, and he old and unarmed, in the vestibule, nor was the aged and effe[pg 24]minate Greek freedman, one on whom reliance could be placed in a deadly struggle.All these things flashed suddenly upon the mind of Cicero, as the heavy knocking fell upon his ear, followed by a murmur of many voices, and the tread of many feet without.He arose quietly from the bronze arm-chair, on which he had been sitting, walked across the room, to a recess beside the book-shelves, and reached down from a hook, on which it hung, among a collection of armor and weapons, a stout, straight, Roman broad-sword, with a highly adorned hilt and scabbard.Scarcely, however, had he taken the weapon in his hand, before the door was thrown open, and his freedman ushered in three men, attired in the full costume of Roman Senators."All hail, at this untimely hour, most noble Cicero," exclaimed the first who entered."By all the Gods!" cried the second, "rejoiced I am, O Consul, to see that you are on your guard; for there is need of watchfulness, in truth, for who love the republic.""Which need it is, in short," added the third, "that has brought us hither.""Most welcome at all times," answered Cicero, laying aside the broad-sword with a smile, "though of a truth, I thought it might be less gracious visitors. Noble Marcellus, have you good tidings of the commonwealth? and you, Metellus Scipio, and you Marcus Crassus? Friends to the state, I know you; and would trust that no ill news hath held you watchful.""Be not too confident of that, my Consul," replied Scipio. "Peril there is, at hand to the commonwealth, in your person.""We have strange tidings here, confirming all that you made known to the Senate, on the twelfth day before the Calends, in letters left by an unknown man with Crassus' doorkeeper this evening," said Marcellus. "We were at supper with him, when they came, and straightway determined to accompany him hither.""In my person!" exclaimed Cicero—"Then is the peril threatened from Lucius Sergius Catiline! were it for myself alone, this were a matter of small moment; but, see[pg 25]ing that I hold alone the clues of this dark plot, it were disastrous to the state, should ought befall me, who have set my life on this cast to save my country.""Indeed disastrous!" exclaimed the wealthy Crassus; "for these most horrible and cursed traitors are sworn, as it would seem, to consume this most glorious city of the earth, and all its stately wealth, with the sword and fire.""To destroy all the noble houses," cried Scipio, "and place the vile and loathsome rabble at the helm of state.""All this, I well knew, of old," said Cicero calmly. "But I pray you, my friends, be seated; and let me see these papers."And taking the anonymous letters from the hands of Crassus, he read them aloud, pausing from time to time, to meditate on the intention of the writer."Marcus Licinius Crassus," thus ran the first, "is spoken of by those, who love not Rome, as their lover and trusty comrade! Doth Marcus Licinius Crassus deem that the flames, which shall roar over universal Rome, will spare his houses only? Doth Marcus Crassus hope, that when the fetters shall be stricken from the limbs of every slave in Rome, his serfs alone will hold their necks beneath a voluntary yoke?—Doth he imagine that, when all the gold of the rich shall be distributed among the needy, his seven thousand talents shall escape the red hands of Catiline and his associates? Be wise! Take heed! The noble, who forsakes his order, earns scorn alone from his new partisans! When Cicero shall fall, all noble Romans shall perish lamentably, with him—when the great Capitol itself shall melt in the conflagration, all private dwellings shall go down in the common ruin. Take counsel of a friend, true, though unknown and humble! Hold fast to the republic! rally the nobles and the rich, around the Consul! Ere the third day hence, he shall be triumphant, or be nothing!—Fare thee well!""This is mysterious, dark, incomprehensible," said Cicero, as he finished reading it. "Had it been sent to me, I should have read it's secret thus, as intended to awake suspicion, in my mind, of a brave and noble Roman! a true friend of his country!" he added, taking the hand of Crassus in his own. "Yet, even so, it would have failed. For as soon would I doubt the truth of heaven itself, as ques[pg 26]tion the patriotic faith of the conqueror of Spartacus! But left at thy house, my Crassus, it seems almost senseless and unmeaning. What have we more?"The snake is scotched, not slain! The spark is concealed, not quenched! The knife is sharp yet, though it lie in the scabbard! When was conspiracy beat down by clemency, or treason conquered by timidity? Let those who would survive the ides of November, keep their loins girded, and their eyes wakeful. What I am, you may not learn, but this much only—I was a noble, before I was a beggar! a Roman, before I was a—traitor!""Ha!" continued the consul, examining the paper closely, "This is somewhat more pregnant—the Ides of November!—the Ides—is it so?—They shall be met withal!—It is a different hand-writing also; and here is a third—Ha!""A third, plainer than the first," said Metellus Scipio—"pray mark it.""Three men have sworn—who never swear in vain—a knight, a senator, and yet a senator again! Two of the three, Cornelii! Their knives are keen, their hands sure, their hearts resolute, against the new man from Arpinum! Let those who love Cicero, look to the seventh day, before November's Ides.""The seventh day—ha? so soon? Be it so," said the undaunted magistrate. "I am prepared for any fortune.""Consul," exclaimed the Freedman, again entering, "I watched with Geta, in the vestibule, since these good fathers entered; and now there have come two ladies clad in the sacred garb of vestals. Two lictors wait on them. They ask to speak with the consul.""Admit them, madman!" exclaimed Cicero; "admit them with all honor. You have not surely kept them in the vestibule?""Not so, my Consul. They are seated on the ivory chairs in the Tablinum.""Pardon me, noble friends. I go to greet the holy virgins. This is a strange and most unusual honour. Lead the way, man."And with the words, he left the room in evident anxiety and haste; while his three visitors stood gazing each on the other, in apprehension mingled with wonder.[pg 27]In a few moments, however, he returned alone, very pale, and wearing on his fine features a singular expression of awe and dignified self-complacency, which seemed to be almost at variance with each other."The Gods," he said, as he entered, in a deep and solemn tone, "the Gods themselves attest Rome's peril by grand and awful portents. The College of the Vestals sends tidings, that 'The State totters to its fall'!""May the Great Gods avert!" cried his three auditors, simultaneously, growing as pale as death, and faltering out their words from ashy lips in weak or uncertain accents."It is so!" said Cicero; who, though a pure Deist, in truth, and no believer in Rome's monstrous polytheism, was not sufficiently emancipated from the superstition of the age to dispute the truth of prodigies and portents. "It is so. The priestess, who watched the sacred flame on the eternal hearth, beheld it leap thrice upward in a clear spire of vivid and unearthly light, and lick the vaulted roof-stones—thrice vanish into utter gloom! Once, she believed the fire extinct, and veiled her head in more than mortal terror. But, after momentary gloom, it again revived, while three strange sighs, mightier than any human voice, came breathing from the inmost shrine, and waved the flame fitfully to and fro, with a dread pallid lustre. The College bids the Consul to watch for himself and the republic, these three days, or ill shall come of it."Even as he spoke, a bustle was again heard in the vestibule, as of a fresh arrival, and again the freedman entered."My Consul, a veiled patrician woman craves to confer with you, in private.""Ha! all Rome is afoot, methinks, to-night. Do you know her, my Glaucias?""I saw her once before, my Consul. On the night of the fearful storm, when the falchion of flame shook over Rome, and the Senate was convened suddenly.""Ha! She! it is well—it is very well! we shall know all anon." And his face lighted up joyously, as he spoke. "Excuse me, Friends and Fathers. This is one privy to the plot, with tidings of weight doubtless. Thanks for your news, and good night; for I must pray you leave me. Your warning hath come in good season, and I will not be[pg 28]taken unaware. The Gods have Rome in their keeping, and, to save her, they will not letmeperish. Fare ye well, nobles. I must be private with this woman."After the ceremonial of the time, his visitors departed; but as they passed through the atrium, they met the lady, conducted by the old Greek freedman.Little expecting to meet any one at that untimely hour, she had allowed her veil to fall down upon her shoulders; and, although she made a movement to recover it, as she saw the Senators approaching her by the faint light of the single lamp which burned before the household gods on the small altar by theimpluvium, Marcus Marcellus caught a passing view of a pair of large languishing blue eyes, and a face of rare beauty."By the great Gods!" he whispered in Crassus' ear, "that was the lovely Fulvia.""Ha! Curius' paramour!" replied the other. "Can it be possible that the stern Consul amuses his light hours, with such high-born harlotry?""Not he! not he!" said Scipio. "I doubt not Curius is one of them! He is needy, and bold, and bloody.""But such a braggart!" answered Marcellus."I have known braggarts fight," said Crassus. "There was a fellow, who served in the fifth legion; he fought before the standard of the hastati; and I deemed him a coward ever, but in the last strife with Spartacus he slew six men with his own hand. I saw it.""I have heard of such things," said Scipio. "But it grows late. Let us move homeward." And then he added, as he was leaving the Consul's door, "If he can trust his household, Cicero should arm it. My life on it! They will attempt to murder him.""He has given orders even now to arm his slaves," said the Freedman, in reply; "and so soon as they have got their blades and bucklers, I go to invite hither the surest of his clients.""Thou shalt do well to do so—But see thou do it silently."And with the words, they hurried homeward through the dark streets, leaving the wise and virtuous magistrate in conference with his abandoned, yet trustworthy informant, Fulvia.[pg 29]CHAPTER IV.THE CRISIS.He is about it. The doors are open.Macbeth.The morning had scarcely dawned, after that dismal and tempestuous night, when three men were observed by some of the earlier citizens, passing up the Sacred Way, toward the Cerolian Place.It was not so much that the earliness of the hour attracted the notice of these spectators—for the Romans were a matutinal people, even in their most effeminate and luxurious ages, and the sun found few loiterers in their chambers, when he came forth from his oriental gates—as that the manner and expression of these men themselves were singular, and such as might well excite suspicion.They all walked abreast, two clad in the full garb of Senators, and one in the distinctive dress of Roman knighthood. No one had heard them speak aloud, nor seen them whisper, one to the other. They moved straight onward, steadily indeed and rather slowly, but with something of consciousness in their manner, glancing furtively around them from beneath their bent brows, and sometimes even casting their eyes over their shoulders, as if to see whether they were followed.At about a hundred paces after these three, not however accompanying them, or attached to their party, so far at least as appearances are considered, two large-framed fellows, clothed in the dark gray frocks worn by slaves and gladiators, came strolling in the same direction.[pg 30]These men had the auburn hair, blue eyes, and massive, if not stolid cast of features peculiar to northern races, at that time the conquered slaves, though destined soon to be the victors, of Rome's gigantic power.When the first three reached the corner of the next block of buildings, to the corner of that magnificent street called the Carinœ, they paused for a few moments; and, after looking carefully about them, to mark whether they were observed or not, held a short whispered conversation, which their stern faces, and impassioned gestures seemed to denote momentous.While they were thus engaged, the other two came sauntering along, and passed them by, apparently unheeded, and without speaking, or saluting them.Those three men were the knight Caius Cornelius, a friend and distant kinsman of Cethegus, who was the second of the number, and Lucius Vargunteius, a Senator, whose name has descended only to posterity, through the black infamy of the deed, which he was even at that moment meditating.Spurred into action by the menaces and violence of Catiline, who had now resolved to go forth and commence open warfare from the entrenched camp prepared in the Appenines, by Caius Manlius, these men had volunteered, on the previous night, at a second meeting held in the house of Læca, to murder Cicero, with their own hands, during his morning levee.To this end, they had now come forth thus early, hoping so to anticipate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless.Three stout men were they, as ever went forth armed and determined for premeditated crime; stout in frame, stout of heart, invulnerable by any physical apprehension, unassailable by any touch of conscience, pitiless, fearless, utterly depraved.Yet there was something in their present enterprise, that half daunted them. Something in the character of the man, whom they were preparing to assassinate—something of undefined feeling, suggesting to them the certainty of the whole world's reproach and scorn through everlasting ages, however present success "might trammel up the consequence."[pg 31]Though they would not have confessed it to their own hearts, they were reluctant toward their task; and this unadmitted reluctance it was, which led them to pause and parley, under the show of arranging their schemes, which had in truth been fully organized on the preceding night.They were too far committed, however, to recede; and it is probable that no one of them, although their hearts were full almost to suffocation, as they neared the good Consul's door, had gone so far as to think of withdrawing his hand from the deed of blood.The outer door of the vestibule was open; and but one slave was stationed in the porch; an old man quite unarmed, not having so much even as a porter's staff, who was sitting on a stone bench, in the morning sunshine.As the conspirators ascended the marble steps, which gave access to the vestibule, and entered the beautiful Tuscan colonnade, the two Germans, who had stopped and looked back for a moment, seeing them pass in, set off as hard as they could run, through an adjoining street toward the house of Catiline, which was not very far distant.It was not long ere they reached it, and entered without question or hindrance, as men familiar and permitted.In a small room, adjoining the inner peristyle, the master of the house was striding to and fro across the tesselated floor, in a state of perturbation, extreme even for him; whose historian has described him with bloodless face, and evil eyes, irregular and restless motions, and the impress of frantic guilt, ever plain to be seen in his agitated features.Aurelia Orestilla sat near him, on a low cushioned stool, with her superb Italian face livid and sicklied by unusual dread. Her hands lay tightly clasped upon her knee—her lips were as white as ashes. Her large lustrous eyes, burning and preternaturally distended, were fixed on the haggard face of her husband, and followed him, as he strode up and down the room in impotent anxiety and expectation.Yet she, privy as she was to all his blackest councils, the instigator and rewarder of his most hideous crime, knowing the hell of impotent agony that was consuming his heart, she dared not address him with any words of hope or consolation.At such a crisis all ordinary phrases of comfort or cheer[pg 32]ing love, seem but a mockery to the spirit, which can find no rest, until the doubts that harass it are ended; and this she felt to be the case, and, had her own torturing expectation allowed her to frame any speech to soothe him, she would not have ventured on its utterance, certain that it would call forth a torrent of imprecation on her head, perhaps a burst of violence against her person.The very affections of the wicked, are strangely mixed at times, with more discordant elements; and it would have been a hard question to solve, whether that horrible pair most loved, or hated one another.The woman's passions, strange to relate, had been kindled at times, by the very cruelty and fury, which at other moments made her almost detest him. There was a species of sublimity in the very atrocity of Catiline's wickedness, which fascinated her morbid and polluted fancy; and she almost admired the ferocity which tortured her, and from which, alone of mortal ills, she shrank appalled and unresisting.And Catiline loved her, as well as he could love anything, loved her the more because she too, in some sort, had elicited his admiration; for she had crossed him many times, and once braved him, and, alone of human beings, he had not crushed her.They were liker to mated tigers, which even in their raptures of affection, rend with the fang, and clutch with the unsheathed talon, until the blood and anguish testify the fury of their passion, than to beings of human mould and nature.Suddenly the traitor stopped short in his wild and agitated walk, and seemed to listen intently, although no sound came to the ears of the woman, who was no less on the alert than he, for any stir or rumor."It is"—he said at length, clasping his hands above his head—"it is the step of Arminius, the trusty gladiator—do you not hear it, Orestilla?""No," she replied, shaking her head doubtfully. "There is no sound at all. My ear is quicker of hearing, too, than yours, Catiline, and if there were any step, I should be first to mark it.""Tush! woman!" he made answer, glaring upon her fiercely. "It is myheartthat hears it."[pg 33]"You have a heart, then!" she replied bitterly, unable even at that time torefrainfrom taunting him."And a hand also, and a dagger! and, by Hell and all its furies! I know not why I do not flesh it in you. I will one day.""No, you will not," she answered very quietly."And wherefore not? I have done many a worse deed in my day. The Gods would scarce punish me for that slaughter; and men might well call it justice.—Wherefore not, I say? Do you think I so doat on your beauty, that I cannot right gladly spare you?""Because," answered the woman, meeting his fixed glare, with a glance as meaning and as fiery, "because, when I find that you meditate it, I will act quickest. I know a drug or two, and an unguent of very sovereign virtue.""Ha! ha!" The reckless profligate burst into a wild ringing laugh of triumphant approbation. "Ha! ha! thou mightst have given me a better reason. Where else should I find such a tigress? By all the Gods! it is your clutch and claws that I prize, more than your softest and most rapturous caress! But hist! hist! now—do you not hear that step?""I do—I do," she replied, clasping her hands again, which she had unclinched in her anger—"and itisArminius' step! I was wrong to cross thee, Catiline; and thou so anxious! we shall hear now—we shall hear all."Almost as she spoke, the German gladiator rushed into the room, heated and panting from his swift race; and, without any sign of reverence or any salutation, exclaimed abruptly,"Catiline, it is over, ere this time! I saw them enter his house!"The woman uttered a low choking shriek, her face flushed crimson, and then again turned paler than before, and she fell back on her cushioned seat, swooning with joy at the welcome tidings.But Catiline flung both his arms abroad toward heaven, and cried aloud—"Ye Gods, for once I thank ye! if there be Gods indeed!" he added, with a sneer—"thou sawest them enter, ha?—thou art not lying?—By all the furies! If you deceive me, I will take care that you see nothing more in this world."[pg 34]"Catiline, these eyes saw them!""At length! at length!" he exclaimed, his eye flashing, and his whole countenance glowing with fiendish animation, "and yet curses upon it!—that I could not slay him—that I should owe to any other hand my vengeance on my victim. Thou hast done well—ha! here is gold, Arminius! the last gold I own—but what of that, to-morrow—to-morrow, I will have millions! Away! away! bold heart, arouse your friends and followers—to arms, to arms, cry havoc through the streets, and liberty and vengeance!"While he was speaking yet, the door was again opened, and Cethegus entered with the others, dull, gloomy, and crest-fallen; but Catiline was in a state of excitement so tremendous, that he saw nothing but the men.At one bound he reached Cethegus, and catching him by both hands—"How!" he exclaimed—"How was it?—quick, tell me, quick! Did he die hard? Did he die, conscious, in despair, in anguish?—Tell me, tell me, you tortured him in the slaying—tell me, he died a coward, howling and cursing fate, and knowing that I,Islew him, and—speak Cethegus?—speak, man! By the Gods! you are pale! silent!—these are not faces fit for triumph! speak, man, I say, how died he?—show me his blood, Cethegus! you have not wiped it from your dagger, give me the blade, that I may kiss away the precious death-drops."So rapidly and impetuously had he spoken, heaping query on query, that Cethegus could not have answered, if he would. But, to say the truth, he was in little haste to do so. When Catiline ceased, however, which he did at length, from actual want of breath to enquire farther, he answered in a low smothered voice."He is not dead at all—he refused"——"Not dead!" shrieked Catiline, for it was a shriek, though articulate, and one so piercing that it roused Aurelia from her swoon of joy—"Not dead! Yon villain swore that he saw you enter—not dead!" he repeated, half incredulously—"By heaven and hell! I believe you are jesting with me! Tell me that you have lied, and I—I—I will worship you, Cethegus.""His porter refused us entrance, and, as the door was opened, we saw in the Atrium the slaves of his household, and half a hundred of his clients, all armed from head to[pg 35]foot, with casque and corslet, pilum, broad-sword, and buckler. And, to complete the tale, as we returned into the street baffled and desperate, a window was thrown open in the banquet-hall above, and we might see the Consul, with Cato, and Marcellus, and Scipio, and a score of Consulars beside, gazing upon us in all the triumph of security, in all the confidence of success. We are betrayed, that is plain—our plans are all known as soon as they are taken, all frustrated ere acted! All is lost, Catiline, for what remains to do?""To dare!" answered the villain, all undaunted even by this reverse—"and, if need be, to die—but to despair, never!""But who can be the traitor?—where shall we look to find him?""Look there," exclaimed Catiline, pointing to the German gladiator, who stood all confounded and chap-fallen. "Look there, and you shall see one; and see him punished too! What ho! without there, ho! a dozen of you, if you would shun the lash!"And, at the summons, ten or twelve slaves and freedmen rushed into the room in trepidation, almost in terror, so savage was the temper of the lord whom they served, and so merciless his wrath, at the most trivial fault or error."Drag that brute, hence!" he said, waving his hand toward the unhappy gladiator, "put out his eyes, fetter him foot and hand, and cast him to the congers in the fish-pond."Without a moment's pause or hesitation, they cast themselves upon their miserable comrade; and, though he struggled furiously, and struck down two or three of the foremost, and shouted himself hoarse, in fruitless efforts to explain, he was secured, and bound and gagged, within a shorter time than is required to describe it.This done, one of the freedmen looked toward his dreaded master, and asked, with pale lips, and a faltering voice,"Alive, Catiline?""Alive—and hark you, Sirrah, fasten his head above the water, that he die not too speedily. Those biggest congers will lug him manfully, Cethegus; we will go see the[pg 36]sport, anon. It will serve to amuse us, after this disappointment. There! away with him, begone!"The miserable creature struggled desperately in his bonds, but in vain; and strove so terribly to speak, in despite his gag, that his face turned almost black, from the blood which rushed to every pore; but no sound could he utter, as he was dragged away, save a deep-mouthed groan, which was drowned by the laughter of the remorseless wretches, who gazed on his anguish with fiendish merriment; among which, hideous to relate, the thrilling sounds of Aurelia's silvery and contagious mirth were distinctly audible."He will take care to see more truly in Hades!" said Catiline, with his sardonic smile, as he was dragged out of the room, by his appalled and trembling fellows. "But now to business. Tell me, did you display any weapon? or do aught, that can be proved, to show your intent on the Consul?""Nothing, my Catiline," replied Cethegus, firmly."Nothing, indeed, Cethegus? By all our hopes! deceive me not!""By your head! nothing, Catiline.""Then I care nothing for the failure!" answered the other. "Keep good hearts, and wear smiling faces! I will kill him myself to-morrow, if, like the scorpion, I must die in the deed.""Try it not, Catiline. You will but fail—and"——"Fail! who ever knew me fail, in vengeance?""No one!" said Orestilla—"and no one can hinder you of it. No! not the Gods!""There are no Gods!" exclaimed the Traitor, "and if there be, it were all one—I defy them!""Cicero says there isone, they tell me," said Cethegus, half mocking, half in earnest—"and he is very wise.""Very!" replied the other, with his accustomed sneer—"Therefore thatonemay save him—if he can!""The thing is settled," cried Aurelia Orestilla, "I told him yesterday he ought to do it, himself—I should not be content, unless Catiline's hand dealt him the death blow, Catiline's eye gloated upon him in the death-struggle, Catiline's tongue jeered him in the death-pang!""You love him dearly, Orestilla," said Cethegus.[pg 37]"And clearly he has earned it," she replied."By Venus! I would give half my hopes, to see him kiss you.""And I, if my lips had the hydra's venom. But come," she added, with a wreathed smile and a beaming eye, "Let us go see the fishes eat yon varlet; else shall we be too late for the sport.""Rare sport!" said Cethegus, "I have not seen a man eaten, by a tiger even, these six months past; and by a fish, I think, never!""The fish do it better," replied Catiline—"Better, and cleaner—they leave the prettiest skeleton you can imagine—they are longer about it, you will say—True; but I do not grudge the time.""No! no! the longer, the merrier!" said Aurelia, laughing melodiously—"The last fellow I saw given to the tigers, had his head crushed like a nut-shell, by a single blow. He had not time to shriek even once. There was no fun in that, you know.""None indeed," said Cethegus—"but I warrant you this German will howl gloriously, when the fish are at him." "Yes! yes!" exclaimed the lovely woman, clapping her hands joyously. "We must have the gag removed, to give free vent to his music. Come, come, I am dying to see him.""Some one must die, since Cicero did not.""Happy fellow this, if he only knew it, to give his friends so much pleasure!""One of them such a fair lady too!""Will there be more pleasure, think you, in seeing the congers eat the gladiator, or in eating the congers afterward?""Oh! no comparison! one can eat fat congers always.""We have the advantage of them truly, for they cannot always eat fat gladiators."And they walked away with as much glee and expectation, to the scene of agony and fiendish torture, vitiated by the frightful exhibitions of the circus and the arena, as men in modern days would feel, in going to enjoy the fictitious sorrows of some grand tragedian.Can it be that the contemplation of human wo, in some form or other, is in all ages grateful to poor corrupt humanity?
[pg 21]CHAPTER III.THE PERIL.Things, bad begun, make strong themselves by ill.Macbeth.Sixteen days had elapsed, since the conspirators were again frustrated at the Consular Comitia.Yet not for that had the arch-traitor withdrawn his foot one hair's breadth from his purpose, or paused one moment in his career of crime and ruin.There is, beyond doubt, a necessity—not as the ancients deemed, supernatural, and the work of fate, but a natural moral necessity—arising from the very quality of crime itself, which spurs the criminal on to new guilt, fresh atrocity.In the dark path of wickedness there is no halting place; the wretched climber must turn his face for ever upward, for ever onward; if he look backward his fall is inevitable, his doom fixed.So was it proved with Catiline. To gain impunity for his first deed of cruelty and blood, another and another were forced on him, until at last, harassed and maddened by the consciousness of untold guilt, his frantic spirit could find no respite, save in the fierce intoxication of excitement, the strange delight of new atrocity.Add to this, that, knowing himself anticipated and discovered, he knew also that if spared for a time by his opponent, it was no lack of will, but lack of opportunity alone to crush him, that held the hands of Cicero inactive.[pg 22]Thus, although for a time the energies of his weaker comrades sank paralysed by the frustration of their schemes, and by the certainty that they were noted and observed even in their most secret hours, his stronger and more vehement spirit found only in the greater danger the greater stimulus to action.Sixteen days had elapsed, and gradually, as the conspirators found that no steps were taken by the government for their apprehension or punishment, they too waxed bolder, and began to fancy, in their insolent presumption, that the republic was too weak or too timid to enforce its own laws upon undoubted traitors.All the causes, moreover, which had urged them at first to councils so desperate, existed undiminished, nay, exaggerated by delay.Their debts, their inability to raise those funds which their boundless profusion rendered necessary, still maddened them; and to these the consciousness of detected guilt, and that "necessity which," in the words of their chief, "makes even the timid brave," were superadded.The people and the Senate, who had all, for a time, been vehemently agitated by a thousand various emotions of anger, fear, anxiety, revenge, forgetting, as all popular bodies are wont to do, the past danger in the present security, were beginning to doubt whether they had not been alarmed at a shadow; and were half inclined to question the existence of any conspiracy, save in the fears of their Consul.It was well for Rome at that hour, that there was still in the commonwealth, a counterpoise to the Democratic Spirit; which, vehement and energetical beyond all others in sudden and great emergencies, is ever restless and impatient of protracted watchfulness and preparation, and lacks that persistency and resolute endurance which seems peculiar to aristocratic constitutions.And now especially were demonstrated these opposite characteristics; for while the lower orders, and the popular portion of the Senate, who had been in the first instance most strenuous in their alarm, and most urgent for strong measures, were now hesitating, doubting, and almost compassionating the culprits, who had fallen under such a load of obloquy, the firmer and more moderate minds, were[pg 23]guarding the safety of the commonwealth in secret, and watching, through their unknown emissaries, every movement of the traitors.It was about twelve o'clock at night, on the eighth day before the Ides, corresponding to our seventh of November, when the Consul was seated alone in the small but sumptuous library, which has been described above, meditating with an anxious and care-worn expression, over some papers which lay before him on the table.No sound had been heard in the house for several hours; all its inhabitants except the Consul only, with the slave who had charge of the outer door, and one faithful freedman, having long since retired to rest.But from without, the wailing of the stormy night-wind rose and fell in melancholy alternations of wild sobbing sound, and breathless silence; and the pattering of heavy rain was distinctly audible on the flat roofs, and in the flooded tank, orimpluvium, which occupied the centre of the hall.It was in one of the lulls of the autumnal storm, that a heavy knock was heard on the pannel of the exterior door, reverberating in long echoes, through the silent vestibule, and the vast colonnades of the Atrium and peristyle.At that dead hour of night, such a summons would have seemed strange in any season: it was now almost alarming.Nor, though he was endowed pre-eminently with that moral strength of mind which is the highest quality of courage, and was by no means deficient in mere physical bravery, did Cicero raise his head from the perusal of his papers, and listen to that unwonted sound, without some symptoms of anxiety and perturbation.So thoroughly acquainted as he was, with the desperate wickedness, the infernal energy, and absolute fearlessness of Catiline, it could not but occur to him instantly, when he heard that unusual summons, at a time when all the innocent world was buried in calm sleep, how easy and obvious a mode of liberation from all danger and restraint, his murder would afford to men so daring and unscrupulous, as those against whom he was playing, for no less a stake than life or death.There was, he well knew, but a single slave, and he old and unarmed, in the vestibule, nor was the aged and effe[pg 24]minate Greek freedman, one on whom reliance could be placed in a deadly struggle.All these things flashed suddenly upon the mind of Cicero, as the heavy knocking fell upon his ear, followed by a murmur of many voices, and the tread of many feet without.He arose quietly from the bronze arm-chair, on which he had been sitting, walked across the room, to a recess beside the book-shelves, and reached down from a hook, on which it hung, among a collection of armor and weapons, a stout, straight, Roman broad-sword, with a highly adorned hilt and scabbard.Scarcely, however, had he taken the weapon in his hand, before the door was thrown open, and his freedman ushered in three men, attired in the full costume of Roman Senators."All hail, at this untimely hour, most noble Cicero," exclaimed the first who entered."By all the Gods!" cried the second, "rejoiced I am, O Consul, to see that you are on your guard; for there is need of watchfulness, in truth, for who love the republic.""Which need it is, in short," added the third, "that has brought us hither.""Most welcome at all times," answered Cicero, laying aside the broad-sword with a smile, "though of a truth, I thought it might be less gracious visitors. Noble Marcellus, have you good tidings of the commonwealth? and you, Metellus Scipio, and you Marcus Crassus? Friends to the state, I know you; and would trust that no ill news hath held you watchful.""Be not too confident of that, my Consul," replied Scipio. "Peril there is, at hand to the commonwealth, in your person.""We have strange tidings here, confirming all that you made known to the Senate, on the twelfth day before the Calends, in letters left by an unknown man with Crassus' doorkeeper this evening," said Marcellus. "We were at supper with him, when they came, and straightway determined to accompany him hither.""In my person!" exclaimed Cicero—"Then is the peril threatened from Lucius Sergius Catiline! were it for myself alone, this were a matter of small moment; but, see[pg 25]ing that I hold alone the clues of this dark plot, it were disastrous to the state, should ought befall me, who have set my life on this cast to save my country.""Indeed disastrous!" exclaimed the wealthy Crassus; "for these most horrible and cursed traitors are sworn, as it would seem, to consume this most glorious city of the earth, and all its stately wealth, with the sword and fire.""To destroy all the noble houses," cried Scipio, "and place the vile and loathsome rabble at the helm of state.""All this, I well knew, of old," said Cicero calmly. "But I pray you, my friends, be seated; and let me see these papers."And taking the anonymous letters from the hands of Crassus, he read them aloud, pausing from time to time, to meditate on the intention of the writer."Marcus Licinius Crassus," thus ran the first, "is spoken of by those, who love not Rome, as their lover and trusty comrade! Doth Marcus Licinius Crassus deem that the flames, which shall roar over universal Rome, will spare his houses only? Doth Marcus Crassus hope, that when the fetters shall be stricken from the limbs of every slave in Rome, his serfs alone will hold their necks beneath a voluntary yoke?—Doth he imagine that, when all the gold of the rich shall be distributed among the needy, his seven thousand talents shall escape the red hands of Catiline and his associates? Be wise! Take heed! The noble, who forsakes his order, earns scorn alone from his new partisans! When Cicero shall fall, all noble Romans shall perish lamentably, with him—when the great Capitol itself shall melt in the conflagration, all private dwellings shall go down in the common ruin. Take counsel of a friend, true, though unknown and humble! Hold fast to the republic! rally the nobles and the rich, around the Consul! Ere the third day hence, he shall be triumphant, or be nothing!—Fare thee well!""This is mysterious, dark, incomprehensible," said Cicero, as he finished reading it. "Had it been sent to me, I should have read it's secret thus, as intended to awake suspicion, in my mind, of a brave and noble Roman! a true friend of his country!" he added, taking the hand of Crassus in his own. "Yet, even so, it would have failed. For as soon would I doubt the truth of heaven itself, as ques[pg 26]tion the patriotic faith of the conqueror of Spartacus! But left at thy house, my Crassus, it seems almost senseless and unmeaning. What have we more?"The snake is scotched, not slain! The spark is concealed, not quenched! The knife is sharp yet, though it lie in the scabbard! When was conspiracy beat down by clemency, or treason conquered by timidity? Let those who would survive the ides of November, keep their loins girded, and their eyes wakeful. What I am, you may not learn, but this much only—I was a noble, before I was a beggar! a Roman, before I was a—traitor!""Ha!" continued the consul, examining the paper closely, "This is somewhat more pregnant—the Ides of November!—the Ides—is it so?—They shall be met withal!—It is a different hand-writing also; and here is a third—Ha!""A third, plainer than the first," said Metellus Scipio—"pray mark it.""Three men have sworn—who never swear in vain—a knight, a senator, and yet a senator again! Two of the three, Cornelii! Their knives are keen, their hands sure, their hearts resolute, against the new man from Arpinum! Let those who love Cicero, look to the seventh day, before November's Ides.""The seventh day—ha? so soon? Be it so," said the undaunted magistrate. "I am prepared for any fortune.""Consul," exclaimed the Freedman, again entering, "I watched with Geta, in the vestibule, since these good fathers entered; and now there have come two ladies clad in the sacred garb of vestals. Two lictors wait on them. They ask to speak with the consul.""Admit them, madman!" exclaimed Cicero; "admit them with all honor. You have not surely kept them in the vestibule?""Not so, my Consul. They are seated on the ivory chairs in the Tablinum.""Pardon me, noble friends. I go to greet the holy virgins. This is a strange and most unusual honour. Lead the way, man."And with the words, he left the room in evident anxiety and haste; while his three visitors stood gazing each on the other, in apprehension mingled with wonder.[pg 27]In a few moments, however, he returned alone, very pale, and wearing on his fine features a singular expression of awe and dignified self-complacency, which seemed to be almost at variance with each other."The Gods," he said, as he entered, in a deep and solemn tone, "the Gods themselves attest Rome's peril by grand and awful portents. The College of the Vestals sends tidings, that 'The State totters to its fall'!""May the Great Gods avert!" cried his three auditors, simultaneously, growing as pale as death, and faltering out their words from ashy lips in weak or uncertain accents."It is so!" said Cicero; who, though a pure Deist, in truth, and no believer in Rome's monstrous polytheism, was not sufficiently emancipated from the superstition of the age to dispute the truth of prodigies and portents. "It is so. The priestess, who watched the sacred flame on the eternal hearth, beheld it leap thrice upward in a clear spire of vivid and unearthly light, and lick the vaulted roof-stones—thrice vanish into utter gloom! Once, she believed the fire extinct, and veiled her head in more than mortal terror. But, after momentary gloom, it again revived, while three strange sighs, mightier than any human voice, came breathing from the inmost shrine, and waved the flame fitfully to and fro, with a dread pallid lustre. The College bids the Consul to watch for himself and the republic, these three days, or ill shall come of it."Even as he spoke, a bustle was again heard in the vestibule, as of a fresh arrival, and again the freedman entered."My Consul, a veiled patrician woman craves to confer with you, in private.""Ha! all Rome is afoot, methinks, to-night. Do you know her, my Glaucias?""I saw her once before, my Consul. On the night of the fearful storm, when the falchion of flame shook over Rome, and the Senate was convened suddenly.""Ha! She! it is well—it is very well! we shall know all anon." And his face lighted up joyously, as he spoke. "Excuse me, Friends and Fathers. This is one privy to the plot, with tidings of weight doubtless. Thanks for your news, and good night; for I must pray you leave me. Your warning hath come in good season, and I will not be[pg 28]taken unaware. The Gods have Rome in their keeping, and, to save her, they will not letmeperish. Fare ye well, nobles. I must be private with this woman."After the ceremonial of the time, his visitors departed; but as they passed through the atrium, they met the lady, conducted by the old Greek freedman.Little expecting to meet any one at that untimely hour, she had allowed her veil to fall down upon her shoulders; and, although she made a movement to recover it, as she saw the Senators approaching her by the faint light of the single lamp which burned before the household gods on the small altar by theimpluvium, Marcus Marcellus caught a passing view of a pair of large languishing blue eyes, and a face of rare beauty."By the great Gods!" he whispered in Crassus' ear, "that was the lovely Fulvia.""Ha! Curius' paramour!" replied the other. "Can it be possible that the stern Consul amuses his light hours, with such high-born harlotry?""Not he! not he!" said Scipio. "I doubt not Curius is one of them! He is needy, and bold, and bloody.""But such a braggart!" answered Marcellus."I have known braggarts fight," said Crassus. "There was a fellow, who served in the fifth legion; he fought before the standard of the hastati; and I deemed him a coward ever, but in the last strife with Spartacus he slew six men with his own hand. I saw it.""I have heard of such things," said Scipio. "But it grows late. Let us move homeward." And then he added, as he was leaving the Consul's door, "If he can trust his household, Cicero should arm it. My life on it! They will attempt to murder him.""He has given orders even now to arm his slaves," said the Freedman, in reply; "and so soon as they have got their blades and bucklers, I go to invite hither the surest of his clients.""Thou shalt do well to do so—But see thou do it silently."And with the words, they hurried homeward through the dark streets, leaving the wise and virtuous magistrate in conference with his abandoned, yet trustworthy informant, Fulvia.[pg 29]CHAPTER IV.THE CRISIS.He is about it. The doors are open.Macbeth.The morning had scarcely dawned, after that dismal and tempestuous night, when three men were observed by some of the earlier citizens, passing up the Sacred Way, toward the Cerolian Place.It was not so much that the earliness of the hour attracted the notice of these spectators—for the Romans were a matutinal people, even in their most effeminate and luxurious ages, and the sun found few loiterers in their chambers, when he came forth from his oriental gates—as that the manner and expression of these men themselves were singular, and such as might well excite suspicion.They all walked abreast, two clad in the full garb of Senators, and one in the distinctive dress of Roman knighthood. No one had heard them speak aloud, nor seen them whisper, one to the other. They moved straight onward, steadily indeed and rather slowly, but with something of consciousness in their manner, glancing furtively around them from beneath their bent brows, and sometimes even casting their eyes over their shoulders, as if to see whether they were followed.At about a hundred paces after these three, not however accompanying them, or attached to their party, so far at least as appearances are considered, two large-framed fellows, clothed in the dark gray frocks worn by slaves and gladiators, came strolling in the same direction.[pg 30]These men had the auburn hair, blue eyes, and massive, if not stolid cast of features peculiar to northern races, at that time the conquered slaves, though destined soon to be the victors, of Rome's gigantic power.When the first three reached the corner of the next block of buildings, to the corner of that magnificent street called the Carinœ, they paused for a few moments; and, after looking carefully about them, to mark whether they were observed or not, held a short whispered conversation, which their stern faces, and impassioned gestures seemed to denote momentous.While they were thus engaged, the other two came sauntering along, and passed them by, apparently unheeded, and without speaking, or saluting them.Those three men were the knight Caius Cornelius, a friend and distant kinsman of Cethegus, who was the second of the number, and Lucius Vargunteius, a Senator, whose name has descended only to posterity, through the black infamy of the deed, which he was even at that moment meditating.Spurred into action by the menaces and violence of Catiline, who had now resolved to go forth and commence open warfare from the entrenched camp prepared in the Appenines, by Caius Manlius, these men had volunteered, on the previous night, at a second meeting held in the house of Læca, to murder Cicero, with their own hands, during his morning levee.To this end, they had now come forth thus early, hoping so to anticipate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless.Three stout men were they, as ever went forth armed and determined for premeditated crime; stout in frame, stout of heart, invulnerable by any physical apprehension, unassailable by any touch of conscience, pitiless, fearless, utterly depraved.Yet there was something in their present enterprise, that half daunted them. Something in the character of the man, whom they were preparing to assassinate—something of undefined feeling, suggesting to them the certainty of the whole world's reproach and scorn through everlasting ages, however present success "might trammel up the consequence."[pg 31]Though they would not have confessed it to their own hearts, they were reluctant toward their task; and this unadmitted reluctance it was, which led them to pause and parley, under the show of arranging their schemes, which had in truth been fully organized on the preceding night.They were too far committed, however, to recede; and it is probable that no one of them, although their hearts were full almost to suffocation, as they neared the good Consul's door, had gone so far as to think of withdrawing his hand from the deed of blood.The outer door of the vestibule was open; and but one slave was stationed in the porch; an old man quite unarmed, not having so much even as a porter's staff, who was sitting on a stone bench, in the morning sunshine.As the conspirators ascended the marble steps, which gave access to the vestibule, and entered the beautiful Tuscan colonnade, the two Germans, who had stopped and looked back for a moment, seeing them pass in, set off as hard as they could run, through an adjoining street toward the house of Catiline, which was not very far distant.It was not long ere they reached it, and entered without question or hindrance, as men familiar and permitted.In a small room, adjoining the inner peristyle, the master of the house was striding to and fro across the tesselated floor, in a state of perturbation, extreme even for him; whose historian has described him with bloodless face, and evil eyes, irregular and restless motions, and the impress of frantic guilt, ever plain to be seen in his agitated features.Aurelia Orestilla sat near him, on a low cushioned stool, with her superb Italian face livid and sicklied by unusual dread. Her hands lay tightly clasped upon her knee—her lips were as white as ashes. Her large lustrous eyes, burning and preternaturally distended, were fixed on the haggard face of her husband, and followed him, as he strode up and down the room in impotent anxiety and expectation.Yet she, privy as she was to all his blackest councils, the instigator and rewarder of his most hideous crime, knowing the hell of impotent agony that was consuming his heart, she dared not address him with any words of hope or consolation.At such a crisis all ordinary phrases of comfort or cheer[pg 32]ing love, seem but a mockery to the spirit, which can find no rest, until the doubts that harass it are ended; and this she felt to be the case, and, had her own torturing expectation allowed her to frame any speech to soothe him, she would not have ventured on its utterance, certain that it would call forth a torrent of imprecation on her head, perhaps a burst of violence against her person.The very affections of the wicked, are strangely mixed at times, with more discordant elements; and it would have been a hard question to solve, whether that horrible pair most loved, or hated one another.The woman's passions, strange to relate, had been kindled at times, by the very cruelty and fury, which at other moments made her almost detest him. There was a species of sublimity in the very atrocity of Catiline's wickedness, which fascinated her morbid and polluted fancy; and she almost admired the ferocity which tortured her, and from which, alone of mortal ills, she shrank appalled and unresisting.And Catiline loved her, as well as he could love anything, loved her the more because she too, in some sort, had elicited his admiration; for she had crossed him many times, and once braved him, and, alone of human beings, he had not crushed her.They were liker to mated tigers, which even in their raptures of affection, rend with the fang, and clutch with the unsheathed talon, until the blood and anguish testify the fury of their passion, than to beings of human mould and nature.Suddenly the traitor stopped short in his wild and agitated walk, and seemed to listen intently, although no sound came to the ears of the woman, who was no less on the alert than he, for any stir or rumor."It is"—he said at length, clasping his hands above his head—"it is the step of Arminius, the trusty gladiator—do you not hear it, Orestilla?""No," she replied, shaking her head doubtfully. "There is no sound at all. My ear is quicker of hearing, too, than yours, Catiline, and if there were any step, I should be first to mark it.""Tush! woman!" he made answer, glaring upon her fiercely. "It is myheartthat hears it."[pg 33]"You have a heart, then!" she replied bitterly, unable even at that time torefrainfrom taunting him."And a hand also, and a dagger! and, by Hell and all its furies! I know not why I do not flesh it in you. I will one day.""No, you will not," she answered very quietly."And wherefore not? I have done many a worse deed in my day. The Gods would scarce punish me for that slaughter; and men might well call it justice.—Wherefore not, I say? Do you think I so doat on your beauty, that I cannot right gladly spare you?""Because," answered the woman, meeting his fixed glare, with a glance as meaning and as fiery, "because, when I find that you meditate it, I will act quickest. I know a drug or two, and an unguent of very sovereign virtue.""Ha! ha!" The reckless profligate burst into a wild ringing laugh of triumphant approbation. "Ha! ha! thou mightst have given me a better reason. Where else should I find such a tigress? By all the Gods! it is your clutch and claws that I prize, more than your softest and most rapturous caress! But hist! hist! now—do you not hear that step?""I do—I do," she replied, clasping her hands again, which she had unclinched in her anger—"and itisArminius' step! I was wrong to cross thee, Catiline; and thou so anxious! we shall hear now—we shall hear all."Almost as she spoke, the German gladiator rushed into the room, heated and panting from his swift race; and, without any sign of reverence or any salutation, exclaimed abruptly,"Catiline, it is over, ere this time! I saw them enter his house!"The woman uttered a low choking shriek, her face flushed crimson, and then again turned paler than before, and she fell back on her cushioned seat, swooning with joy at the welcome tidings.But Catiline flung both his arms abroad toward heaven, and cried aloud—"Ye Gods, for once I thank ye! if there be Gods indeed!" he added, with a sneer—"thou sawest them enter, ha?—thou art not lying?—By all the furies! If you deceive me, I will take care that you see nothing more in this world."[pg 34]"Catiline, these eyes saw them!""At length! at length!" he exclaimed, his eye flashing, and his whole countenance glowing with fiendish animation, "and yet curses upon it!—that I could not slay him—that I should owe to any other hand my vengeance on my victim. Thou hast done well—ha! here is gold, Arminius! the last gold I own—but what of that, to-morrow—to-morrow, I will have millions! Away! away! bold heart, arouse your friends and followers—to arms, to arms, cry havoc through the streets, and liberty and vengeance!"While he was speaking yet, the door was again opened, and Cethegus entered with the others, dull, gloomy, and crest-fallen; but Catiline was in a state of excitement so tremendous, that he saw nothing but the men.At one bound he reached Cethegus, and catching him by both hands—"How!" he exclaimed—"How was it?—quick, tell me, quick! Did he die hard? Did he die, conscious, in despair, in anguish?—Tell me, tell me, you tortured him in the slaying—tell me, he died a coward, howling and cursing fate, and knowing that I,Islew him, and—speak Cethegus?—speak, man! By the Gods! you are pale! silent!—these are not faces fit for triumph! speak, man, I say, how died he?—show me his blood, Cethegus! you have not wiped it from your dagger, give me the blade, that I may kiss away the precious death-drops."So rapidly and impetuously had he spoken, heaping query on query, that Cethegus could not have answered, if he would. But, to say the truth, he was in little haste to do so. When Catiline ceased, however, which he did at length, from actual want of breath to enquire farther, he answered in a low smothered voice."He is not dead at all—he refused"——"Not dead!" shrieked Catiline, for it was a shriek, though articulate, and one so piercing that it roused Aurelia from her swoon of joy—"Not dead! Yon villain swore that he saw you enter—not dead!" he repeated, half incredulously—"By heaven and hell! I believe you are jesting with me! Tell me that you have lied, and I—I—I will worship you, Cethegus.""His porter refused us entrance, and, as the door was opened, we saw in the Atrium the slaves of his household, and half a hundred of his clients, all armed from head to[pg 35]foot, with casque and corslet, pilum, broad-sword, and buckler. And, to complete the tale, as we returned into the street baffled and desperate, a window was thrown open in the banquet-hall above, and we might see the Consul, with Cato, and Marcellus, and Scipio, and a score of Consulars beside, gazing upon us in all the triumph of security, in all the confidence of success. We are betrayed, that is plain—our plans are all known as soon as they are taken, all frustrated ere acted! All is lost, Catiline, for what remains to do?""To dare!" answered the villain, all undaunted even by this reverse—"and, if need be, to die—but to despair, never!""But who can be the traitor?—where shall we look to find him?""Look there," exclaimed Catiline, pointing to the German gladiator, who stood all confounded and chap-fallen. "Look there, and you shall see one; and see him punished too! What ho! without there, ho! a dozen of you, if you would shun the lash!"And, at the summons, ten or twelve slaves and freedmen rushed into the room in trepidation, almost in terror, so savage was the temper of the lord whom they served, and so merciless his wrath, at the most trivial fault or error."Drag that brute, hence!" he said, waving his hand toward the unhappy gladiator, "put out his eyes, fetter him foot and hand, and cast him to the congers in the fish-pond."Without a moment's pause or hesitation, they cast themselves upon their miserable comrade; and, though he struggled furiously, and struck down two or three of the foremost, and shouted himself hoarse, in fruitless efforts to explain, he was secured, and bound and gagged, within a shorter time than is required to describe it.This done, one of the freedmen looked toward his dreaded master, and asked, with pale lips, and a faltering voice,"Alive, Catiline?""Alive—and hark you, Sirrah, fasten his head above the water, that he die not too speedily. Those biggest congers will lug him manfully, Cethegus; we will go see the[pg 36]sport, anon. It will serve to amuse us, after this disappointment. There! away with him, begone!"The miserable creature struggled desperately in his bonds, but in vain; and strove so terribly to speak, in despite his gag, that his face turned almost black, from the blood which rushed to every pore; but no sound could he utter, as he was dragged away, save a deep-mouthed groan, which was drowned by the laughter of the remorseless wretches, who gazed on his anguish with fiendish merriment; among which, hideous to relate, the thrilling sounds of Aurelia's silvery and contagious mirth were distinctly audible."He will take care to see more truly in Hades!" said Catiline, with his sardonic smile, as he was dragged out of the room, by his appalled and trembling fellows. "But now to business. Tell me, did you display any weapon? or do aught, that can be proved, to show your intent on the Consul?""Nothing, my Catiline," replied Cethegus, firmly."Nothing, indeed, Cethegus? By all our hopes! deceive me not!""By your head! nothing, Catiline.""Then I care nothing for the failure!" answered the other. "Keep good hearts, and wear smiling faces! I will kill him myself to-morrow, if, like the scorpion, I must die in the deed.""Try it not, Catiline. You will but fail—and"——"Fail! who ever knew me fail, in vengeance?""No one!" said Orestilla—"and no one can hinder you of it. No! not the Gods!""There are no Gods!" exclaimed the Traitor, "and if there be, it were all one—I defy them!""Cicero says there isone, they tell me," said Cethegus, half mocking, half in earnest—"and he is very wise.""Very!" replied the other, with his accustomed sneer—"Therefore thatonemay save him—if he can!""The thing is settled," cried Aurelia Orestilla, "I told him yesterday he ought to do it, himself—I should not be content, unless Catiline's hand dealt him the death blow, Catiline's eye gloated upon him in the death-struggle, Catiline's tongue jeered him in the death-pang!""You love him dearly, Orestilla," said Cethegus.[pg 37]"And clearly he has earned it," she replied."By Venus! I would give half my hopes, to see him kiss you.""And I, if my lips had the hydra's venom. But come," she added, with a wreathed smile and a beaming eye, "Let us go see the fishes eat yon varlet; else shall we be too late for the sport.""Rare sport!" said Cethegus, "I have not seen a man eaten, by a tiger even, these six months past; and by a fish, I think, never!""The fish do it better," replied Catiline—"Better, and cleaner—they leave the prettiest skeleton you can imagine—they are longer about it, you will say—True; but I do not grudge the time.""No! no! the longer, the merrier!" said Aurelia, laughing melodiously—"The last fellow I saw given to the tigers, had his head crushed like a nut-shell, by a single blow. He had not time to shriek even once. There was no fun in that, you know.""None indeed," said Cethegus—"but I warrant you this German will howl gloriously, when the fish are at him." "Yes! yes!" exclaimed the lovely woman, clapping her hands joyously. "We must have the gag removed, to give free vent to his music. Come, come, I am dying to see him.""Some one must die, since Cicero did not.""Happy fellow this, if he only knew it, to give his friends so much pleasure!""One of them such a fair lady too!""Will there be more pleasure, think you, in seeing the congers eat the gladiator, or in eating the congers afterward?""Oh! no comparison! one can eat fat congers always.""We have the advantage of them truly, for they cannot always eat fat gladiators."And they walked away with as much glee and expectation, to the scene of agony and fiendish torture, vitiated by the frightful exhibitions of the circus and the arena, as men in modern days would feel, in going to enjoy the fictitious sorrows of some grand tragedian.Can it be that the contemplation of human wo, in some form or other, is in all ages grateful to poor corrupt humanity?
[pg 21]CHAPTER III.THE PERIL.Things, bad begun, make strong themselves by ill.Macbeth.Sixteen days had elapsed, since the conspirators were again frustrated at the Consular Comitia.Yet not for that had the arch-traitor withdrawn his foot one hair's breadth from his purpose, or paused one moment in his career of crime and ruin.There is, beyond doubt, a necessity—not as the ancients deemed, supernatural, and the work of fate, but a natural moral necessity—arising from the very quality of crime itself, which spurs the criminal on to new guilt, fresh atrocity.In the dark path of wickedness there is no halting place; the wretched climber must turn his face for ever upward, for ever onward; if he look backward his fall is inevitable, his doom fixed.So was it proved with Catiline. To gain impunity for his first deed of cruelty and blood, another and another were forced on him, until at last, harassed and maddened by the consciousness of untold guilt, his frantic spirit could find no respite, save in the fierce intoxication of excitement, the strange delight of new atrocity.Add to this, that, knowing himself anticipated and discovered, he knew also that if spared for a time by his opponent, it was no lack of will, but lack of opportunity alone to crush him, that held the hands of Cicero inactive.[pg 22]Thus, although for a time the energies of his weaker comrades sank paralysed by the frustration of their schemes, and by the certainty that they were noted and observed even in their most secret hours, his stronger and more vehement spirit found only in the greater danger the greater stimulus to action.Sixteen days had elapsed, and gradually, as the conspirators found that no steps were taken by the government for their apprehension or punishment, they too waxed bolder, and began to fancy, in their insolent presumption, that the republic was too weak or too timid to enforce its own laws upon undoubted traitors.All the causes, moreover, which had urged them at first to councils so desperate, existed undiminished, nay, exaggerated by delay.Their debts, their inability to raise those funds which their boundless profusion rendered necessary, still maddened them; and to these the consciousness of detected guilt, and that "necessity which," in the words of their chief, "makes even the timid brave," were superadded.The people and the Senate, who had all, for a time, been vehemently agitated by a thousand various emotions of anger, fear, anxiety, revenge, forgetting, as all popular bodies are wont to do, the past danger in the present security, were beginning to doubt whether they had not been alarmed at a shadow; and were half inclined to question the existence of any conspiracy, save in the fears of their Consul.It was well for Rome at that hour, that there was still in the commonwealth, a counterpoise to the Democratic Spirit; which, vehement and energetical beyond all others in sudden and great emergencies, is ever restless and impatient of protracted watchfulness and preparation, and lacks that persistency and resolute endurance which seems peculiar to aristocratic constitutions.And now especially were demonstrated these opposite characteristics; for while the lower orders, and the popular portion of the Senate, who had been in the first instance most strenuous in their alarm, and most urgent for strong measures, were now hesitating, doubting, and almost compassionating the culprits, who had fallen under such a load of obloquy, the firmer and more moderate minds, were[pg 23]guarding the safety of the commonwealth in secret, and watching, through their unknown emissaries, every movement of the traitors.It was about twelve o'clock at night, on the eighth day before the Ides, corresponding to our seventh of November, when the Consul was seated alone in the small but sumptuous library, which has been described above, meditating with an anxious and care-worn expression, over some papers which lay before him on the table.No sound had been heard in the house for several hours; all its inhabitants except the Consul only, with the slave who had charge of the outer door, and one faithful freedman, having long since retired to rest.But from without, the wailing of the stormy night-wind rose and fell in melancholy alternations of wild sobbing sound, and breathless silence; and the pattering of heavy rain was distinctly audible on the flat roofs, and in the flooded tank, orimpluvium, which occupied the centre of the hall.It was in one of the lulls of the autumnal storm, that a heavy knock was heard on the pannel of the exterior door, reverberating in long echoes, through the silent vestibule, and the vast colonnades of the Atrium and peristyle.At that dead hour of night, such a summons would have seemed strange in any season: it was now almost alarming.Nor, though he was endowed pre-eminently with that moral strength of mind which is the highest quality of courage, and was by no means deficient in mere physical bravery, did Cicero raise his head from the perusal of his papers, and listen to that unwonted sound, without some symptoms of anxiety and perturbation.So thoroughly acquainted as he was, with the desperate wickedness, the infernal energy, and absolute fearlessness of Catiline, it could not but occur to him instantly, when he heard that unusual summons, at a time when all the innocent world was buried in calm sleep, how easy and obvious a mode of liberation from all danger and restraint, his murder would afford to men so daring and unscrupulous, as those against whom he was playing, for no less a stake than life or death.There was, he well knew, but a single slave, and he old and unarmed, in the vestibule, nor was the aged and effe[pg 24]minate Greek freedman, one on whom reliance could be placed in a deadly struggle.All these things flashed suddenly upon the mind of Cicero, as the heavy knocking fell upon his ear, followed by a murmur of many voices, and the tread of many feet without.He arose quietly from the bronze arm-chair, on which he had been sitting, walked across the room, to a recess beside the book-shelves, and reached down from a hook, on which it hung, among a collection of armor and weapons, a stout, straight, Roman broad-sword, with a highly adorned hilt and scabbard.Scarcely, however, had he taken the weapon in his hand, before the door was thrown open, and his freedman ushered in three men, attired in the full costume of Roman Senators."All hail, at this untimely hour, most noble Cicero," exclaimed the first who entered."By all the Gods!" cried the second, "rejoiced I am, O Consul, to see that you are on your guard; for there is need of watchfulness, in truth, for who love the republic.""Which need it is, in short," added the third, "that has brought us hither.""Most welcome at all times," answered Cicero, laying aside the broad-sword with a smile, "though of a truth, I thought it might be less gracious visitors. Noble Marcellus, have you good tidings of the commonwealth? and you, Metellus Scipio, and you Marcus Crassus? Friends to the state, I know you; and would trust that no ill news hath held you watchful.""Be not too confident of that, my Consul," replied Scipio. "Peril there is, at hand to the commonwealth, in your person.""We have strange tidings here, confirming all that you made known to the Senate, on the twelfth day before the Calends, in letters left by an unknown man with Crassus' doorkeeper this evening," said Marcellus. "We were at supper with him, when they came, and straightway determined to accompany him hither.""In my person!" exclaimed Cicero—"Then is the peril threatened from Lucius Sergius Catiline! were it for myself alone, this were a matter of small moment; but, see[pg 25]ing that I hold alone the clues of this dark plot, it were disastrous to the state, should ought befall me, who have set my life on this cast to save my country.""Indeed disastrous!" exclaimed the wealthy Crassus; "for these most horrible and cursed traitors are sworn, as it would seem, to consume this most glorious city of the earth, and all its stately wealth, with the sword and fire.""To destroy all the noble houses," cried Scipio, "and place the vile and loathsome rabble at the helm of state.""All this, I well knew, of old," said Cicero calmly. "But I pray you, my friends, be seated; and let me see these papers."And taking the anonymous letters from the hands of Crassus, he read them aloud, pausing from time to time, to meditate on the intention of the writer."Marcus Licinius Crassus," thus ran the first, "is spoken of by those, who love not Rome, as their lover and trusty comrade! Doth Marcus Licinius Crassus deem that the flames, which shall roar over universal Rome, will spare his houses only? Doth Marcus Crassus hope, that when the fetters shall be stricken from the limbs of every slave in Rome, his serfs alone will hold their necks beneath a voluntary yoke?—Doth he imagine that, when all the gold of the rich shall be distributed among the needy, his seven thousand talents shall escape the red hands of Catiline and his associates? Be wise! Take heed! The noble, who forsakes his order, earns scorn alone from his new partisans! When Cicero shall fall, all noble Romans shall perish lamentably, with him—when the great Capitol itself shall melt in the conflagration, all private dwellings shall go down in the common ruin. Take counsel of a friend, true, though unknown and humble! Hold fast to the republic! rally the nobles and the rich, around the Consul! Ere the third day hence, he shall be triumphant, or be nothing!—Fare thee well!""This is mysterious, dark, incomprehensible," said Cicero, as he finished reading it. "Had it been sent to me, I should have read it's secret thus, as intended to awake suspicion, in my mind, of a brave and noble Roman! a true friend of his country!" he added, taking the hand of Crassus in his own. "Yet, even so, it would have failed. For as soon would I doubt the truth of heaven itself, as ques[pg 26]tion the patriotic faith of the conqueror of Spartacus! But left at thy house, my Crassus, it seems almost senseless and unmeaning. What have we more?"The snake is scotched, not slain! The spark is concealed, not quenched! The knife is sharp yet, though it lie in the scabbard! When was conspiracy beat down by clemency, or treason conquered by timidity? Let those who would survive the ides of November, keep their loins girded, and their eyes wakeful. What I am, you may not learn, but this much only—I was a noble, before I was a beggar! a Roman, before I was a—traitor!""Ha!" continued the consul, examining the paper closely, "This is somewhat more pregnant—the Ides of November!—the Ides—is it so?—They shall be met withal!—It is a different hand-writing also; and here is a third—Ha!""A third, plainer than the first," said Metellus Scipio—"pray mark it.""Three men have sworn—who never swear in vain—a knight, a senator, and yet a senator again! Two of the three, Cornelii! Their knives are keen, their hands sure, their hearts resolute, against the new man from Arpinum! Let those who love Cicero, look to the seventh day, before November's Ides.""The seventh day—ha? so soon? Be it so," said the undaunted magistrate. "I am prepared for any fortune.""Consul," exclaimed the Freedman, again entering, "I watched with Geta, in the vestibule, since these good fathers entered; and now there have come two ladies clad in the sacred garb of vestals. Two lictors wait on them. They ask to speak with the consul.""Admit them, madman!" exclaimed Cicero; "admit them with all honor. You have not surely kept them in the vestibule?""Not so, my Consul. They are seated on the ivory chairs in the Tablinum.""Pardon me, noble friends. I go to greet the holy virgins. This is a strange and most unusual honour. Lead the way, man."And with the words, he left the room in evident anxiety and haste; while his three visitors stood gazing each on the other, in apprehension mingled with wonder.[pg 27]In a few moments, however, he returned alone, very pale, and wearing on his fine features a singular expression of awe and dignified self-complacency, which seemed to be almost at variance with each other."The Gods," he said, as he entered, in a deep and solemn tone, "the Gods themselves attest Rome's peril by grand and awful portents. The College of the Vestals sends tidings, that 'The State totters to its fall'!""May the Great Gods avert!" cried his three auditors, simultaneously, growing as pale as death, and faltering out their words from ashy lips in weak or uncertain accents."It is so!" said Cicero; who, though a pure Deist, in truth, and no believer in Rome's monstrous polytheism, was not sufficiently emancipated from the superstition of the age to dispute the truth of prodigies and portents. "It is so. The priestess, who watched the sacred flame on the eternal hearth, beheld it leap thrice upward in a clear spire of vivid and unearthly light, and lick the vaulted roof-stones—thrice vanish into utter gloom! Once, she believed the fire extinct, and veiled her head in more than mortal terror. But, after momentary gloom, it again revived, while three strange sighs, mightier than any human voice, came breathing from the inmost shrine, and waved the flame fitfully to and fro, with a dread pallid lustre. The College bids the Consul to watch for himself and the republic, these three days, or ill shall come of it."Even as he spoke, a bustle was again heard in the vestibule, as of a fresh arrival, and again the freedman entered."My Consul, a veiled patrician woman craves to confer with you, in private.""Ha! all Rome is afoot, methinks, to-night. Do you know her, my Glaucias?""I saw her once before, my Consul. On the night of the fearful storm, when the falchion of flame shook over Rome, and the Senate was convened suddenly.""Ha! She! it is well—it is very well! we shall know all anon." And his face lighted up joyously, as he spoke. "Excuse me, Friends and Fathers. This is one privy to the plot, with tidings of weight doubtless. Thanks for your news, and good night; for I must pray you leave me. Your warning hath come in good season, and I will not be[pg 28]taken unaware. The Gods have Rome in their keeping, and, to save her, they will not letmeperish. Fare ye well, nobles. I must be private with this woman."After the ceremonial of the time, his visitors departed; but as they passed through the atrium, they met the lady, conducted by the old Greek freedman.Little expecting to meet any one at that untimely hour, she had allowed her veil to fall down upon her shoulders; and, although she made a movement to recover it, as she saw the Senators approaching her by the faint light of the single lamp which burned before the household gods on the small altar by theimpluvium, Marcus Marcellus caught a passing view of a pair of large languishing blue eyes, and a face of rare beauty."By the great Gods!" he whispered in Crassus' ear, "that was the lovely Fulvia.""Ha! Curius' paramour!" replied the other. "Can it be possible that the stern Consul amuses his light hours, with such high-born harlotry?""Not he! not he!" said Scipio. "I doubt not Curius is one of them! He is needy, and bold, and bloody.""But such a braggart!" answered Marcellus."I have known braggarts fight," said Crassus. "There was a fellow, who served in the fifth legion; he fought before the standard of the hastati; and I deemed him a coward ever, but in the last strife with Spartacus he slew six men with his own hand. I saw it.""I have heard of such things," said Scipio. "But it grows late. Let us move homeward." And then he added, as he was leaving the Consul's door, "If he can trust his household, Cicero should arm it. My life on it! They will attempt to murder him.""He has given orders even now to arm his slaves," said the Freedman, in reply; "and so soon as they have got their blades and bucklers, I go to invite hither the surest of his clients.""Thou shalt do well to do so—But see thou do it silently."And with the words, they hurried homeward through the dark streets, leaving the wise and virtuous magistrate in conference with his abandoned, yet trustworthy informant, Fulvia.
Things, bad begun, make strong themselves by ill.Macbeth.
Things, bad begun, make strong themselves by ill.
Macbeth.
Sixteen days had elapsed, since the conspirators were again frustrated at the Consular Comitia.
Yet not for that had the arch-traitor withdrawn his foot one hair's breadth from his purpose, or paused one moment in his career of crime and ruin.
There is, beyond doubt, a necessity—not as the ancients deemed, supernatural, and the work of fate, but a natural moral necessity—arising from the very quality of crime itself, which spurs the criminal on to new guilt, fresh atrocity.
In the dark path of wickedness there is no halting place; the wretched climber must turn his face for ever upward, for ever onward; if he look backward his fall is inevitable, his doom fixed.
So was it proved with Catiline. To gain impunity for his first deed of cruelty and blood, another and another were forced on him, until at last, harassed and maddened by the consciousness of untold guilt, his frantic spirit could find no respite, save in the fierce intoxication of excitement, the strange delight of new atrocity.
Add to this, that, knowing himself anticipated and discovered, he knew also that if spared for a time by his opponent, it was no lack of will, but lack of opportunity alone to crush him, that held the hands of Cicero inactive.
Thus, although for a time the energies of his weaker comrades sank paralysed by the frustration of their schemes, and by the certainty that they were noted and observed even in their most secret hours, his stronger and more vehement spirit found only in the greater danger the greater stimulus to action.
Sixteen days had elapsed, and gradually, as the conspirators found that no steps were taken by the government for their apprehension or punishment, they too waxed bolder, and began to fancy, in their insolent presumption, that the republic was too weak or too timid to enforce its own laws upon undoubted traitors.
All the causes, moreover, which had urged them at first to councils so desperate, existed undiminished, nay, exaggerated by delay.
Their debts, their inability to raise those funds which their boundless profusion rendered necessary, still maddened them; and to these the consciousness of detected guilt, and that "necessity which," in the words of their chief, "makes even the timid brave," were superadded.
The people and the Senate, who had all, for a time, been vehemently agitated by a thousand various emotions of anger, fear, anxiety, revenge, forgetting, as all popular bodies are wont to do, the past danger in the present security, were beginning to doubt whether they had not been alarmed at a shadow; and were half inclined to question the existence of any conspiracy, save in the fears of their Consul.
It was well for Rome at that hour, that there was still in the commonwealth, a counterpoise to the Democratic Spirit; which, vehement and energetical beyond all others in sudden and great emergencies, is ever restless and impatient of protracted watchfulness and preparation, and lacks that persistency and resolute endurance which seems peculiar to aristocratic constitutions.
And now especially were demonstrated these opposite characteristics; for while the lower orders, and the popular portion of the Senate, who had been in the first instance most strenuous in their alarm, and most urgent for strong measures, were now hesitating, doubting, and almost compassionating the culprits, who had fallen under such a load of obloquy, the firmer and more moderate minds, were[pg 23]guarding the safety of the commonwealth in secret, and watching, through their unknown emissaries, every movement of the traitors.
It was about twelve o'clock at night, on the eighth day before the Ides, corresponding to our seventh of November, when the Consul was seated alone in the small but sumptuous library, which has been described above, meditating with an anxious and care-worn expression, over some papers which lay before him on the table.
No sound had been heard in the house for several hours; all its inhabitants except the Consul only, with the slave who had charge of the outer door, and one faithful freedman, having long since retired to rest.
But from without, the wailing of the stormy night-wind rose and fell in melancholy alternations of wild sobbing sound, and breathless silence; and the pattering of heavy rain was distinctly audible on the flat roofs, and in the flooded tank, orimpluvium, which occupied the centre of the hall.
It was in one of the lulls of the autumnal storm, that a heavy knock was heard on the pannel of the exterior door, reverberating in long echoes, through the silent vestibule, and the vast colonnades of the Atrium and peristyle.
At that dead hour of night, such a summons would have seemed strange in any season: it was now almost alarming.
Nor, though he was endowed pre-eminently with that moral strength of mind which is the highest quality of courage, and was by no means deficient in mere physical bravery, did Cicero raise his head from the perusal of his papers, and listen to that unwonted sound, without some symptoms of anxiety and perturbation.
So thoroughly acquainted as he was, with the desperate wickedness, the infernal energy, and absolute fearlessness of Catiline, it could not but occur to him instantly, when he heard that unusual summons, at a time when all the innocent world was buried in calm sleep, how easy and obvious a mode of liberation from all danger and restraint, his murder would afford to men so daring and unscrupulous, as those against whom he was playing, for no less a stake than life or death.
There was, he well knew, but a single slave, and he old and unarmed, in the vestibule, nor was the aged and effe[pg 24]minate Greek freedman, one on whom reliance could be placed in a deadly struggle.
All these things flashed suddenly upon the mind of Cicero, as the heavy knocking fell upon his ear, followed by a murmur of many voices, and the tread of many feet without.
He arose quietly from the bronze arm-chair, on which he had been sitting, walked across the room, to a recess beside the book-shelves, and reached down from a hook, on which it hung, among a collection of armor and weapons, a stout, straight, Roman broad-sword, with a highly adorned hilt and scabbard.
Scarcely, however, had he taken the weapon in his hand, before the door was thrown open, and his freedman ushered in three men, attired in the full costume of Roman Senators.
"All hail, at this untimely hour, most noble Cicero," exclaimed the first who entered.
"By all the Gods!" cried the second, "rejoiced I am, O Consul, to see that you are on your guard; for there is need of watchfulness, in truth, for who love the republic."
"Which need it is, in short," added the third, "that has brought us hither."
"Most welcome at all times," answered Cicero, laying aside the broad-sword with a smile, "though of a truth, I thought it might be less gracious visitors. Noble Marcellus, have you good tidings of the commonwealth? and you, Metellus Scipio, and you Marcus Crassus? Friends to the state, I know you; and would trust that no ill news hath held you watchful."
"Be not too confident of that, my Consul," replied Scipio. "Peril there is, at hand to the commonwealth, in your person."
"We have strange tidings here, confirming all that you made known to the Senate, on the twelfth day before the Calends, in letters left by an unknown man with Crassus' doorkeeper this evening," said Marcellus. "We were at supper with him, when they came, and straightway determined to accompany him hither."
"In my person!" exclaimed Cicero—"Then is the peril threatened from Lucius Sergius Catiline! were it for myself alone, this were a matter of small moment; but, see[pg 25]ing that I hold alone the clues of this dark plot, it were disastrous to the state, should ought befall me, who have set my life on this cast to save my country."
"Indeed disastrous!" exclaimed the wealthy Crassus; "for these most horrible and cursed traitors are sworn, as it would seem, to consume this most glorious city of the earth, and all its stately wealth, with the sword and fire."
"To destroy all the noble houses," cried Scipio, "and place the vile and loathsome rabble at the helm of state."
"All this, I well knew, of old," said Cicero calmly. "But I pray you, my friends, be seated; and let me see these papers."
And taking the anonymous letters from the hands of Crassus, he read them aloud, pausing from time to time, to meditate on the intention of the writer.
"Marcus Licinius Crassus," thus ran the first, "is spoken of by those, who love not Rome, as their lover and trusty comrade! Doth Marcus Licinius Crassus deem that the flames, which shall roar over universal Rome, will spare his houses only? Doth Marcus Crassus hope, that when the fetters shall be stricken from the limbs of every slave in Rome, his serfs alone will hold their necks beneath a voluntary yoke?—Doth he imagine that, when all the gold of the rich shall be distributed among the needy, his seven thousand talents shall escape the red hands of Catiline and his associates? Be wise! Take heed! The noble, who forsakes his order, earns scorn alone from his new partisans! When Cicero shall fall, all noble Romans shall perish lamentably, with him—when the great Capitol itself shall melt in the conflagration, all private dwellings shall go down in the common ruin. Take counsel of a friend, true, though unknown and humble! Hold fast to the republic! rally the nobles and the rich, around the Consul! Ere the third day hence, he shall be triumphant, or be nothing!—Fare thee well!"
"This is mysterious, dark, incomprehensible," said Cicero, as he finished reading it. "Had it been sent to me, I should have read it's secret thus, as intended to awake suspicion, in my mind, of a brave and noble Roman! a true friend of his country!" he added, taking the hand of Crassus in his own. "Yet, even so, it would have failed. For as soon would I doubt the truth of heaven itself, as ques[pg 26]tion the patriotic faith of the conqueror of Spartacus! But left at thy house, my Crassus, it seems almost senseless and unmeaning. What have we more?
"The snake is scotched, not slain! The spark is concealed, not quenched! The knife is sharp yet, though it lie in the scabbard! When was conspiracy beat down by clemency, or treason conquered by timidity? Let those who would survive the ides of November, keep their loins girded, and their eyes wakeful. What I am, you may not learn, but this much only—I was a noble, before I was a beggar! a Roman, before I was a—traitor!"
"Ha!" continued the consul, examining the paper closely, "This is somewhat more pregnant—the Ides of November!—the Ides—is it so?—They shall be met withal!—It is a different hand-writing also; and here is a third—Ha!"
"A third, plainer than the first," said Metellus Scipio—"pray mark it."
"Three men have sworn—who never swear in vain—a knight, a senator, and yet a senator again! Two of the three, Cornelii! Their knives are keen, their hands sure, their hearts resolute, against the new man from Arpinum! Let those who love Cicero, look to the seventh day, before November's Ides."
"The seventh day—ha? so soon? Be it so," said the undaunted magistrate. "I am prepared for any fortune."
"Consul," exclaimed the Freedman, again entering, "I watched with Geta, in the vestibule, since these good fathers entered; and now there have come two ladies clad in the sacred garb of vestals. Two lictors wait on them. They ask to speak with the consul."
"Admit them, madman!" exclaimed Cicero; "admit them with all honor. You have not surely kept them in the vestibule?"
"Not so, my Consul. They are seated on the ivory chairs in the Tablinum."
"Pardon me, noble friends. I go to greet the holy virgins. This is a strange and most unusual honour. Lead the way, man."
And with the words, he left the room in evident anxiety and haste; while his three visitors stood gazing each on the other, in apprehension mingled with wonder.
In a few moments, however, he returned alone, very pale, and wearing on his fine features a singular expression of awe and dignified self-complacency, which seemed to be almost at variance with each other.
"The Gods," he said, as he entered, in a deep and solemn tone, "the Gods themselves attest Rome's peril by grand and awful portents. The College of the Vestals sends tidings, that 'The State totters to its fall'!"
"May the Great Gods avert!" cried his three auditors, simultaneously, growing as pale as death, and faltering out their words from ashy lips in weak or uncertain accents.
"It is so!" said Cicero; who, though a pure Deist, in truth, and no believer in Rome's monstrous polytheism, was not sufficiently emancipated from the superstition of the age to dispute the truth of prodigies and portents. "It is so. The priestess, who watched the sacred flame on the eternal hearth, beheld it leap thrice upward in a clear spire of vivid and unearthly light, and lick the vaulted roof-stones—thrice vanish into utter gloom! Once, she believed the fire extinct, and veiled her head in more than mortal terror. But, after momentary gloom, it again revived, while three strange sighs, mightier than any human voice, came breathing from the inmost shrine, and waved the flame fitfully to and fro, with a dread pallid lustre. The College bids the Consul to watch for himself and the republic, these three days, or ill shall come of it."
Even as he spoke, a bustle was again heard in the vestibule, as of a fresh arrival, and again the freedman entered.
"My Consul, a veiled patrician woman craves to confer with you, in private."
"Ha! all Rome is afoot, methinks, to-night. Do you know her, my Glaucias?"
"I saw her once before, my Consul. On the night of the fearful storm, when the falchion of flame shook over Rome, and the Senate was convened suddenly."
"Ha! She! it is well—it is very well! we shall know all anon." And his face lighted up joyously, as he spoke. "Excuse me, Friends and Fathers. This is one privy to the plot, with tidings of weight doubtless. Thanks for your news, and good night; for I must pray you leave me. Your warning hath come in good season, and I will not be[pg 28]taken unaware. The Gods have Rome in their keeping, and, to save her, they will not letmeperish. Fare ye well, nobles. I must be private with this woman."
After the ceremonial of the time, his visitors departed; but as they passed through the atrium, they met the lady, conducted by the old Greek freedman.
Little expecting to meet any one at that untimely hour, she had allowed her veil to fall down upon her shoulders; and, although she made a movement to recover it, as she saw the Senators approaching her by the faint light of the single lamp which burned before the household gods on the small altar by theimpluvium, Marcus Marcellus caught a passing view of a pair of large languishing blue eyes, and a face of rare beauty.
"By the great Gods!" he whispered in Crassus' ear, "that was the lovely Fulvia."
"Ha! Curius' paramour!" replied the other. "Can it be possible that the stern Consul amuses his light hours, with such high-born harlotry?"
"Not he! not he!" said Scipio. "I doubt not Curius is one of them! He is needy, and bold, and bloody."
"But such a braggart!" answered Marcellus.
"I have known braggarts fight," said Crassus. "There was a fellow, who served in the fifth legion; he fought before the standard of the hastati; and I deemed him a coward ever, but in the last strife with Spartacus he slew six men with his own hand. I saw it."
"I have heard of such things," said Scipio. "But it grows late. Let us move homeward." And then he added, as he was leaving the Consul's door, "If he can trust his household, Cicero should arm it. My life on it! They will attempt to murder him."
"He has given orders even now to arm his slaves," said the Freedman, in reply; "and so soon as they have got their blades and bucklers, I go to invite hither the surest of his clients."
"Thou shalt do well to do so—But see thou do it silently."
And with the words, they hurried homeward through the dark streets, leaving the wise and virtuous magistrate in conference with his abandoned, yet trustworthy informant, Fulvia.
[pg 29]CHAPTER IV.THE CRISIS.He is about it. The doors are open.Macbeth.The morning had scarcely dawned, after that dismal and tempestuous night, when three men were observed by some of the earlier citizens, passing up the Sacred Way, toward the Cerolian Place.It was not so much that the earliness of the hour attracted the notice of these spectators—for the Romans were a matutinal people, even in their most effeminate and luxurious ages, and the sun found few loiterers in their chambers, when he came forth from his oriental gates—as that the manner and expression of these men themselves were singular, and such as might well excite suspicion.They all walked abreast, two clad in the full garb of Senators, and one in the distinctive dress of Roman knighthood. No one had heard them speak aloud, nor seen them whisper, one to the other. They moved straight onward, steadily indeed and rather slowly, but with something of consciousness in their manner, glancing furtively around them from beneath their bent brows, and sometimes even casting their eyes over their shoulders, as if to see whether they were followed.At about a hundred paces after these three, not however accompanying them, or attached to their party, so far at least as appearances are considered, two large-framed fellows, clothed in the dark gray frocks worn by slaves and gladiators, came strolling in the same direction.[pg 30]These men had the auburn hair, blue eyes, and massive, if not stolid cast of features peculiar to northern races, at that time the conquered slaves, though destined soon to be the victors, of Rome's gigantic power.When the first three reached the corner of the next block of buildings, to the corner of that magnificent street called the Carinœ, they paused for a few moments; and, after looking carefully about them, to mark whether they were observed or not, held a short whispered conversation, which their stern faces, and impassioned gestures seemed to denote momentous.While they were thus engaged, the other two came sauntering along, and passed them by, apparently unheeded, and without speaking, or saluting them.Those three men were the knight Caius Cornelius, a friend and distant kinsman of Cethegus, who was the second of the number, and Lucius Vargunteius, a Senator, whose name has descended only to posterity, through the black infamy of the deed, which he was even at that moment meditating.Spurred into action by the menaces and violence of Catiline, who had now resolved to go forth and commence open warfare from the entrenched camp prepared in the Appenines, by Caius Manlius, these men had volunteered, on the previous night, at a second meeting held in the house of Læca, to murder Cicero, with their own hands, during his morning levee.To this end, they had now come forth thus early, hoping so to anticipate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless.Three stout men were they, as ever went forth armed and determined for premeditated crime; stout in frame, stout of heart, invulnerable by any physical apprehension, unassailable by any touch of conscience, pitiless, fearless, utterly depraved.Yet there was something in their present enterprise, that half daunted them. Something in the character of the man, whom they were preparing to assassinate—something of undefined feeling, suggesting to them the certainty of the whole world's reproach and scorn through everlasting ages, however present success "might trammel up the consequence."[pg 31]Though they would not have confessed it to their own hearts, they were reluctant toward their task; and this unadmitted reluctance it was, which led them to pause and parley, under the show of arranging their schemes, which had in truth been fully organized on the preceding night.They were too far committed, however, to recede; and it is probable that no one of them, although their hearts were full almost to suffocation, as they neared the good Consul's door, had gone so far as to think of withdrawing his hand from the deed of blood.The outer door of the vestibule was open; and but one slave was stationed in the porch; an old man quite unarmed, not having so much even as a porter's staff, who was sitting on a stone bench, in the morning sunshine.As the conspirators ascended the marble steps, which gave access to the vestibule, and entered the beautiful Tuscan colonnade, the two Germans, who had stopped and looked back for a moment, seeing them pass in, set off as hard as they could run, through an adjoining street toward the house of Catiline, which was not very far distant.It was not long ere they reached it, and entered without question or hindrance, as men familiar and permitted.In a small room, adjoining the inner peristyle, the master of the house was striding to and fro across the tesselated floor, in a state of perturbation, extreme even for him; whose historian has described him with bloodless face, and evil eyes, irregular and restless motions, and the impress of frantic guilt, ever plain to be seen in his agitated features.Aurelia Orestilla sat near him, on a low cushioned stool, with her superb Italian face livid and sicklied by unusual dread. Her hands lay tightly clasped upon her knee—her lips were as white as ashes. Her large lustrous eyes, burning and preternaturally distended, were fixed on the haggard face of her husband, and followed him, as he strode up and down the room in impotent anxiety and expectation.Yet she, privy as she was to all his blackest councils, the instigator and rewarder of his most hideous crime, knowing the hell of impotent agony that was consuming his heart, she dared not address him with any words of hope or consolation.At such a crisis all ordinary phrases of comfort or cheer[pg 32]ing love, seem but a mockery to the spirit, which can find no rest, until the doubts that harass it are ended; and this she felt to be the case, and, had her own torturing expectation allowed her to frame any speech to soothe him, she would not have ventured on its utterance, certain that it would call forth a torrent of imprecation on her head, perhaps a burst of violence against her person.The very affections of the wicked, are strangely mixed at times, with more discordant elements; and it would have been a hard question to solve, whether that horrible pair most loved, or hated one another.The woman's passions, strange to relate, had been kindled at times, by the very cruelty and fury, which at other moments made her almost detest him. There was a species of sublimity in the very atrocity of Catiline's wickedness, which fascinated her morbid and polluted fancy; and she almost admired the ferocity which tortured her, and from which, alone of mortal ills, she shrank appalled and unresisting.And Catiline loved her, as well as he could love anything, loved her the more because she too, in some sort, had elicited his admiration; for she had crossed him many times, and once braved him, and, alone of human beings, he had not crushed her.They were liker to mated tigers, which even in their raptures of affection, rend with the fang, and clutch with the unsheathed talon, until the blood and anguish testify the fury of their passion, than to beings of human mould and nature.Suddenly the traitor stopped short in his wild and agitated walk, and seemed to listen intently, although no sound came to the ears of the woman, who was no less on the alert than he, for any stir or rumor."It is"—he said at length, clasping his hands above his head—"it is the step of Arminius, the trusty gladiator—do you not hear it, Orestilla?""No," she replied, shaking her head doubtfully. "There is no sound at all. My ear is quicker of hearing, too, than yours, Catiline, and if there were any step, I should be first to mark it.""Tush! woman!" he made answer, glaring upon her fiercely. "It is myheartthat hears it."[pg 33]"You have a heart, then!" she replied bitterly, unable even at that time torefrainfrom taunting him."And a hand also, and a dagger! and, by Hell and all its furies! I know not why I do not flesh it in you. I will one day.""No, you will not," she answered very quietly."And wherefore not? I have done many a worse deed in my day. The Gods would scarce punish me for that slaughter; and men might well call it justice.—Wherefore not, I say? Do you think I so doat on your beauty, that I cannot right gladly spare you?""Because," answered the woman, meeting his fixed glare, with a glance as meaning and as fiery, "because, when I find that you meditate it, I will act quickest. I know a drug or two, and an unguent of very sovereign virtue.""Ha! ha!" The reckless profligate burst into a wild ringing laugh of triumphant approbation. "Ha! ha! thou mightst have given me a better reason. Where else should I find such a tigress? By all the Gods! it is your clutch and claws that I prize, more than your softest and most rapturous caress! But hist! hist! now—do you not hear that step?""I do—I do," she replied, clasping her hands again, which she had unclinched in her anger—"and itisArminius' step! I was wrong to cross thee, Catiline; and thou so anxious! we shall hear now—we shall hear all."Almost as she spoke, the German gladiator rushed into the room, heated and panting from his swift race; and, without any sign of reverence or any salutation, exclaimed abruptly,"Catiline, it is over, ere this time! I saw them enter his house!"The woman uttered a low choking shriek, her face flushed crimson, and then again turned paler than before, and she fell back on her cushioned seat, swooning with joy at the welcome tidings.But Catiline flung both his arms abroad toward heaven, and cried aloud—"Ye Gods, for once I thank ye! if there be Gods indeed!" he added, with a sneer—"thou sawest them enter, ha?—thou art not lying?—By all the furies! If you deceive me, I will take care that you see nothing more in this world."[pg 34]"Catiline, these eyes saw them!""At length! at length!" he exclaimed, his eye flashing, and his whole countenance glowing with fiendish animation, "and yet curses upon it!—that I could not slay him—that I should owe to any other hand my vengeance on my victim. Thou hast done well—ha! here is gold, Arminius! the last gold I own—but what of that, to-morrow—to-morrow, I will have millions! Away! away! bold heart, arouse your friends and followers—to arms, to arms, cry havoc through the streets, and liberty and vengeance!"While he was speaking yet, the door was again opened, and Cethegus entered with the others, dull, gloomy, and crest-fallen; but Catiline was in a state of excitement so tremendous, that he saw nothing but the men.At one bound he reached Cethegus, and catching him by both hands—"How!" he exclaimed—"How was it?—quick, tell me, quick! Did he die hard? Did he die, conscious, in despair, in anguish?—Tell me, tell me, you tortured him in the slaying—tell me, he died a coward, howling and cursing fate, and knowing that I,Islew him, and—speak Cethegus?—speak, man! By the Gods! you are pale! silent!—these are not faces fit for triumph! speak, man, I say, how died he?—show me his blood, Cethegus! you have not wiped it from your dagger, give me the blade, that I may kiss away the precious death-drops."So rapidly and impetuously had he spoken, heaping query on query, that Cethegus could not have answered, if he would. But, to say the truth, he was in little haste to do so. When Catiline ceased, however, which he did at length, from actual want of breath to enquire farther, he answered in a low smothered voice."He is not dead at all—he refused"——"Not dead!" shrieked Catiline, for it was a shriek, though articulate, and one so piercing that it roused Aurelia from her swoon of joy—"Not dead! Yon villain swore that he saw you enter—not dead!" he repeated, half incredulously—"By heaven and hell! I believe you are jesting with me! Tell me that you have lied, and I—I—I will worship you, Cethegus.""His porter refused us entrance, and, as the door was opened, we saw in the Atrium the slaves of his household, and half a hundred of his clients, all armed from head to[pg 35]foot, with casque and corslet, pilum, broad-sword, and buckler. And, to complete the tale, as we returned into the street baffled and desperate, a window was thrown open in the banquet-hall above, and we might see the Consul, with Cato, and Marcellus, and Scipio, and a score of Consulars beside, gazing upon us in all the triumph of security, in all the confidence of success. We are betrayed, that is plain—our plans are all known as soon as they are taken, all frustrated ere acted! All is lost, Catiline, for what remains to do?""To dare!" answered the villain, all undaunted even by this reverse—"and, if need be, to die—but to despair, never!""But who can be the traitor?—where shall we look to find him?""Look there," exclaimed Catiline, pointing to the German gladiator, who stood all confounded and chap-fallen. "Look there, and you shall see one; and see him punished too! What ho! without there, ho! a dozen of you, if you would shun the lash!"And, at the summons, ten or twelve slaves and freedmen rushed into the room in trepidation, almost in terror, so savage was the temper of the lord whom they served, and so merciless his wrath, at the most trivial fault or error."Drag that brute, hence!" he said, waving his hand toward the unhappy gladiator, "put out his eyes, fetter him foot and hand, and cast him to the congers in the fish-pond."Without a moment's pause or hesitation, they cast themselves upon their miserable comrade; and, though he struggled furiously, and struck down two or three of the foremost, and shouted himself hoarse, in fruitless efforts to explain, he was secured, and bound and gagged, within a shorter time than is required to describe it.This done, one of the freedmen looked toward his dreaded master, and asked, with pale lips, and a faltering voice,"Alive, Catiline?""Alive—and hark you, Sirrah, fasten his head above the water, that he die not too speedily. Those biggest congers will lug him manfully, Cethegus; we will go see the[pg 36]sport, anon. It will serve to amuse us, after this disappointment. There! away with him, begone!"The miserable creature struggled desperately in his bonds, but in vain; and strove so terribly to speak, in despite his gag, that his face turned almost black, from the blood which rushed to every pore; but no sound could he utter, as he was dragged away, save a deep-mouthed groan, which was drowned by the laughter of the remorseless wretches, who gazed on his anguish with fiendish merriment; among which, hideous to relate, the thrilling sounds of Aurelia's silvery and contagious mirth were distinctly audible."He will take care to see more truly in Hades!" said Catiline, with his sardonic smile, as he was dragged out of the room, by his appalled and trembling fellows. "But now to business. Tell me, did you display any weapon? or do aught, that can be proved, to show your intent on the Consul?""Nothing, my Catiline," replied Cethegus, firmly."Nothing, indeed, Cethegus? By all our hopes! deceive me not!""By your head! nothing, Catiline.""Then I care nothing for the failure!" answered the other. "Keep good hearts, and wear smiling faces! I will kill him myself to-morrow, if, like the scorpion, I must die in the deed.""Try it not, Catiline. You will but fail—and"——"Fail! who ever knew me fail, in vengeance?""No one!" said Orestilla—"and no one can hinder you of it. No! not the Gods!""There are no Gods!" exclaimed the Traitor, "and if there be, it were all one—I defy them!""Cicero says there isone, they tell me," said Cethegus, half mocking, half in earnest—"and he is very wise.""Very!" replied the other, with his accustomed sneer—"Therefore thatonemay save him—if he can!""The thing is settled," cried Aurelia Orestilla, "I told him yesterday he ought to do it, himself—I should not be content, unless Catiline's hand dealt him the death blow, Catiline's eye gloated upon him in the death-struggle, Catiline's tongue jeered him in the death-pang!""You love him dearly, Orestilla," said Cethegus.[pg 37]"And clearly he has earned it," she replied."By Venus! I would give half my hopes, to see him kiss you.""And I, if my lips had the hydra's venom. But come," she added, with a wreathed smile and a beaming eye, "Let us go see the fishes eat yon varlet; else shall we be too late for the sport.""Rare sport!" said Cethegus, "I have not seen a man eaten, by a tiger even, these six months past; and by a fish, I think, never!""The fish do it better," replied Catiline—"Better, and cleaner—they leave the prettiest skeleton you can imagine—they are longer about it, you will say—True; but I do not grudge the time.""No! no! the longer, the merrier!" said Aurelia, laughing melodiously—"The last fellow I saw given to the tigers, had his head crushed like a nut-shell, by a single blow. He had not time to shriek even once. There was no fun in that, you know.""None indeed," said Cethegus—"but I warrant you this German will howl gloriously, when the fish are at him." "Yes! yes!" exclaimed the lovely woman, clapping her hands joyously. "We must have the gag removed, to give free vent to his music. Come, come, I am dying to see him.""Some one must die, since Cicero did not.""Happy fellow this, if he only knew it, to give his friends so much pleasure!""One of them such a fair lady too!""Will there be more pleasure, think you, in seeing the congers eat the gladiator, or in eating the congers afterward?""Oh! no comparison! one can eat fat congers always.""We have the advantage of them truly, for they cannot always eat fat gladiators."And they walked away with as much glee and expectation, to the scene of agony and fiendish torture, vitiated by the frightful exhibitions of the circus and the arena, as men in modern days would feel, in going to enjoy the fictitious sorrows of some grand tragedian.Can it be that the contemplation of human wo, in some form or other, is in all ages grateful to poor corrupt humanity?
He is about it. The doors are open.Macbeth.
He is about it. The doors are open.
Macbeth.
The morning had scarcely dawned, after that dismal and tempestuous night, when three men were observed by some of the earlier citizens, passing up the Sacred Way, toward the Cerolian Place.
It was not so much that the earliness of the hour attracted the notice of these spectators—for the Romans were a matutinal people, even in their most effeminate and luxurious ages, and the sun found few loiterers in their chambers, when he came forth from his oriental gates—as that the manner and expression of these men themselves were singular, and such as might well excite suspicion.
They all walked abreast, two clad in the full garb of Senators, and one in the distinctive dress of Roman knighthood. No one had heard them speak aloud, nor seen them whisper, one to the other. They moved straight onward, steadily indeed and rather slowly, but with something of consciousness in their manner, glancing furtively around them from beneath their bent brows, and sometimes even casting their eyes over their shoulders, as if to see whether they were followed.
At about a hundred paces after these three, not however accompanying them, or attached to their party, so far at least as appearances are considered, two large-framed fellows, clothed in the dark gray frocks worn by slaves and gladiators, came strolling in the same direction.
These men had the auburn hair, blue eyes, and massive, if not stolid cast of features peculiar to northern races, at that time the conquered slaves, though destined soon to be the victors, of Rome's gigantic power.
When the first three reached the corner of the next block of buildings, to the corner of that magnificent street called the Carinœ, they paused for a few moments; and, after looking carefully about them, to mark whether they were observed or not, held a short whispered conversation, which their stern faces, and impassioned gestures seemed to denote momentous.
While they were thus engaged, the other two came sauntering along, and passed them by, apparently unheeded, and without speaking, or saluting them.
Those three men were the knight Caius Cornelius, a friend and distant kinsman of Cethegus, who was the second of the number, and Lucius Vargunteius, a Senator, whose name has descended only to posterity, through the black infamy of the deed, which he was even at that moment meditating.
Spurred into action by the menaces and violence of Catiline, who had now resolved to go forth and commence open warfare from the entrenched camp prepared in the Appenines, by Caius Manlius, these men had volunteered, on the previous night, at a second meeting held in the house of Læca, to murder Cicero, with their own hands, during his morning levee.
To this end, they had now come forth thus early, hoping so to anticipate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless.
Three stout men were they, as ever went forth armed and determined for premeditated crime; stout in frame, stout of heart, invulnerable by any physical apprehension, unassailable by any touch of conscience, pitiless, fearless, utterly depraved.
Yet there was something in their present enterprise, that half daunted them. Something in the character of the man, whom they were preparing to assassinate—something of undefined feeling, suggesting to them the certainty of the whole world's reproach and scorn through everlasting ages, however present success "might trammel up the consequence."
Though they would not have confessed it to their own hearts, they were reluctant toward their task; and this unadmitted reluctance it was, which led them to pause and parley, under the show of arranging their schemes, which had in truth been fully organized on the preceding night.
They were too far committed, however, to recede; and it is probable that no one of them, although their hearts were full almost to suffocation, as they neared the good Consul's door, had gone so far as to think of withdrawing his hand from the deed of blood.
The outer door of the vestibule was open; and but one slave was stationed in the porch; an old man quite unarmed, not having so much even as a porter's staff, who was sitting on a stone bench, in the morning sunshine.
As the conspirators ascended the marble steps, which gave access to the vestibule, and entered the beautiful Tuscan colonnade, the two Germans, who had stopped and looked back for a moment, seeing them pass in, set off as hard as they could run, through an adjoining street toward the house of Catiline, which was not very far distant.
It was not long ere they reached it, and entered without question or hindrance, as men familiar and permitted.
In a small room, adjoining the inner peristyle, the master of the house was striding to and fro across the tesselated floor, in a state of perturbation, extreme even for him; whose historian has described him with bloodless face, and evil eyes, irregular and restless motions, and the impress of frantic guilt, ever plain to be seen in his agitated features.
Aurelia Orestilla sat near him, on a low cushioned stool, with her superb Italian face livid and sicklied by unusual dread. Her hands lay tightly clasped upon her knee—her lips were as white as ashes. Her large lustrous eyes, burning and preternaturally distended, were fixed on the haggard face of her husband, and followed him, as he strode up and down the room in impotent anxiety and expectation.
Yet she, privy as she was to all his blackest councils, the instigator and rewarder of his most hideous crime, knowing the hell of impotent agony that was consuming his heart, she dared not address him with any words of hope or consolation.
At such a crisis all ordinary phrases of comfort or cheer[pg 32]ing love, seem but a mockery to the spirit, which can find no rest, until the doubts that harass it are ended; and this she felt to be the case, and, had her own torturing expectation allowed her to frame any speech to soothe him, she would not have ventured on its utterance, certain that it would call forth a torrent of imprecation on her head, perhaps a burst of violence against her person.
The very affections of the wicked, are strangely mixed at times, with more discordant elements; and it would have been a hard question to solve, whether that horrible pair most loved, or hated one another.
The woman's passions, strange to relate, had been kindled at times, by the very cruelty and fury, which at other moments made her almost detest him. There was a species of sublimity in the very atrocity of Catiline's wickedness, which fascinated her morbid and polluted fancy; and she almost admired the ferocity which tortured her, and from which, alone of mortal ills, she shrank appalled and unresisting.
And Catiline loved her, as well as he could love anything, loved her the more because she too, in some sort, had elicited his admiration; for she had crossed him many times, and once braved him, and, alone of human beings, he had not crushed her.
They were liker to mated tigers, which even in their raptures of affection, rend with the fang, and clutch with the unsheathed talon, until the blood and anguish testify the fury of their passion, than to beings of human mould and nature.
Suddenly the traitor stopped short in his wild and agitated walk, and seemed to listen intently, although no sound came to the ears of the woman, who was no less on the alert than he, for any stir or rumor.
"It is"—he said at length, clasping his hands above his head—"it is the step of Arminius, the trusty gladiator—do you not hear it, Orestilla?"
"No," she replied, shaking her head doubtfully. "There is no sound at all. My ear is quicker of hearing, too, than yours, Catiline, and if there were any step, I should be first to mark it."
"Tush! woman!" he made answer, glaring upon her fiercely. "It is myheartthat hears it."
"You have a heart, then!" she replied bitterly, unable even at that time torefrainfrom taunting him.
"And a hand also, and a dagger! and, by Hell and all its furies! I know not why I do not flesh it in you. I will one day."
"No, you will not," she answered very quietly.
"And wherefore not? I have done many a worse deed in my day. The Gods would scarce punish me for that slaughter; and men might well call it justice.—Wherefore not, I say? Do you think I so doat on your beauty, that I cannot right gladly spare you?"
"Because," answered the woman, meeting his fixed glare, with a glance as meaning and as fiery, "because, when I find that you meditate it, I will act quickest. I know a drug or two, and an unguent of very sovereign virtue."
"Ha! ha!" The reckless profligate burst into a wild ringing laugh of triumphant approbation. "Ha! ha! thou mightst have given me a better reason. Where else should I find such a tigress? By all the Gods! it is your clutch and claws that I prize, more than your softest and most rapturous caress! But hist! hist! now—do you not hear that step?"
"I do—I do," she replied, clasping her hands again, which she had unclinched in her anger—"and itisArminius' step! I was wrong to cross thee, Catiline; and thou so anxious! we shall hear now—we shall hear all."
Almost as she spoke, the German gladiator rushed into the room, heated and panting from his swift race; and, without any sign of reverence or any salutation, exclaimed abruptly,
"Catiline, it is over, ere this time! I saw them enter his house!"
The woman uttered a low choking shriek, her face flushed crimson, and then again turned paler than before, and she fell back on her cushioned seat, swooning with joy at the welcome tidings.
But Catiline flung both his arms abroad toward heaven, and cried aloud—"Ye Gods, for once I thank ye! if there be Gods indeed!" he added, with a sneer—"thou sawest them enter, ha?—thou art not lying?—By all the furies! If you deceive me, I will take care that you see nothing more in this world."
"Catiline, these eyes saw them!"
"At length! at length!" he exclaimed, his eye flashing, and his whole countenance glowing with fiendish animation, "and yet curses upon it!—that I could not slay him—that I should owe to any other hand my vengeance on my victim. Thou hast done well—ha! here is gold, Arminius! the last gold I own—but what of that, to-morrow—to-morrow, I will have millions! Away! away! bold heart, arouse your friends and followers—to arms, to arms, cry havoc through the streets, and liberty and vengeance!"
While he was speaking yet, the door was again opened, and Cethegus entered with the others, dull, gloomy, and crest-fallen; but Catiline was in a state of excitement so tremendous, that he saw nothing but the men.
At one bound he reached Cethegus, and catching him by both hands—"How!" he exclaimed—"How was it?—quick, tell me, quick! Did he die hard? Did he die, conscious, in despair, in anguish?—Tell me, tell me, you tortured him in the slaying—tell me, he died a coward, howling and cursing fate, and knowing that I,Islew him, and—speak Cethegus?—speak, man! By the Gods! you are pale! silent!—these are not faces fit for triumph! speak, man, I say, how died he?—show me his blood, Cethegus! you have not wiped it from your dagger, give me the blade, that I may kiss away the precious death-drops."
So rapidly and impetuously had he spoken, heaping query on query, that Cethegus could not have answered, if he would. But, to say the truth, he was in little haste to do so. When Catiline ceased, however, which he did at length, from actual want of breath to enquire farther, he answered in a low smothered voice.
"He is not dead at all—he refused"——
"Not dead!" shrieked Catiline, for it was a shriek, though articulate, and one so piercing that it roused Aurelia from her swoon of joy—"Not dead! Yon villain swore that he saw you enter—not dead!" he repeated, half incredulously—"By heaven and hell! I believe you are jesting with me! Tell me that you have lied, and I—I—I will worship you, Cethegus."
"His porter refused us entrance, and, as the door was opened, we saw in the Atrium the slaves of his household, and half a hundred of his clients, all armed from head to[pg 35]foot, with casque and corslet, pilum, broad-sword, and buckler. And, to complete the tale, as we returned into the street baffled and desperate, a window was thrown open in the banquet-hall above, and we might see the Consul, with Cato, and Marcellus, and Scipio, and a score of Consulars beside, gazing upon us in all the triumph of security, in all the confidence of success. We are betrayed, that is plain—our plans are all known as soon as they are taken, all frustrated ere acted! All is lost, Catiline, for what remains to do?"
"To dare!" answered the villain, all undaunted even by this reverse—"and, if need be, to die—but to despair, never!"
"But who can be the traitor?—where shall we look to find him?"
"Look there," exclaimed Catiline, pointing to the German gladiator, who stood all confounded and chap-fallen. "Look there, and you shall see one; and see him punished too! What ho! without there, ho! a dozen of you, if you would shun the lash!"
And, at the summons, ten or twelve slaves and freedmen rushed into the room in trepidation, almost in terror, so savage was the temper of the lord whom they served, and so merciless his wrath, at the most trivial fault or error.
"Drag that brute, hence!" he said, waving his hand toward the unhappy gladiator, "put out his eyes, fetter him foot and hand, and cast him to the congers in the fish-pond."
Without a moment's pause or hesitation, they cast themselves upon their miserable comrade; and, though he struggled furiously, and struck down two or three of the foremost, and shouted himself hoarse, in fruitless efforts to explain, he was secured, and bound and gagged, within a shorter time than is required to describe it.
This done, one of the freedmen looked toward his dreaded master, and asked, with pale lips, and a faltering voice,
"Alive, Catiline?"
"Alive—and hark you, Sirrah, fasten his head above the water, that he die not too speedily. Those biggest congers will lug him manfully, Cethegus; we will go see the[pg 36]sport, anon. It will serve to amuse us, after this disappointment. There! away with him, begone!"
The miserable creature struggled desperately in his bonds, but in vain; and strove so terribly to speak, in despite his gag, that his face turned almost black, from the blood which rushed to every pore; but no sound could he utter, as he was dragged away, save a deep-mouthed groan, which was drowned by the laughter of the remorseless wretches, who gazed on his anguish with fiendish merriment; among which, hideous to relate, the thrilling sounds of Aurelia's silvery and contagious mirth were distinctly audible.
"He will take care to see more truly in Hades!" said Catiline, with his sardonic smile, as he was dragged out of the room, by his appalled and trembling fellows. "But now to business. Tell me, did you display any weapon? or do aught, that can be proved, to show your intent on the Consul?"
"Nothing, my Catiline," replied Cethegus, firmly.
"Nothing, indeed, Cethegus? By all our hopes! deceive me not!"
"By your head! nothing, Catiline."
"Then I care nothing for the failure!" answered the other. "Keep good hearts, and wear smiling faces! I will kill him myself to-morrow, if, like the scorpion, I must die in the deed."
"Try it not, Catiline. You will but fail—and"——
"Fail! who ever knew me fail, in vengeance?"
"No one!" said Orestilla—"and no one can hinder you of it. No! not the Gods!"
"There are no Gods!" exclaimed the Traitor, "and if there be, it were all one—I defy them!"
"Cicero says there isone, they tell me," said Cethegus, half mocking, half in earnest—"and he is very wise."
"Very!" replied the other, with his accustomed sneer—"Therefore thatonemay save him—if he can!"
"The thing is settled," cried Aurelia Orestilla, "I told him yesterday he ought to do it, himself—I should not be content, unless Catiline's hand dealt him the death blow, Catiline's eye gloated upon him in the death-struggle, Catiline's tongue jeered him in the death-pang!"
"You love him dearly, Orestilla," said Cethegus.
"And clearly he has earned it," she replied.
"By Venus! I would give half my hopes, to see him kiss you."
"And I, if my lips had the hydra's venom. But come," she added, with a wreathed smile and a beaming eye, "Let us go see the fishes eat yon varlet; else shall we be too late for the sport."
"Rare sport!" said Cethegus, "I have not seen a man eaten, by a tiger even, these six months past; and by a fish, I think, never!"
"The fish do it better," replied Catiline—"Better, and cleaner—they leave the prettiest skeleton you can imagine—they are longer about it, you will say—True; but I do not grudge the time."
"No! no! the longer, the merrier!" said Aurelia, laughing melodiously—"The last fellow I saw given to the tigers, had his head crushed like a nut-shell, by a single blow. He had not time to shriek even once. There was no fun in that, you know."
"None indeed," said Cethegus—"but I warrant you this German will howl gloriously, when the fish are at him." "Yes! yes!" exclaimed the lovely woman, clapping her hands joyously. "We must have the gag removed, to give free vent to his music. Come, come, I am dying to see him."
"Some one must die, since Cicero did not."
"Happy fellow this, if he only knew it, to give his friends so much pleasure!"
"One of them such a fair lady too!"
"Will there be more pleasure, think you, in seeing the congers eat the gladiator, or in eating the congers afterward?"
"Oh! no comparison! one can eat fat congers always."
"We have the advantage of them truly, for they cannot always eat fat gladiators."
And they walked away with as much glee and expectation, to the scene of agony and fiendish torture, vitiated by the frightful exhibitions of the circus and the arena, as men in modern days would feel, in going to enjoy the fictitious sorrows of some grand tragedian.
Can it be that the contemplation of human wo, in some form or other, is in all ages grateful to poor corrupt humanity?