"In Gods, whose worship were adultery and murder?" said Arvina. "Not I, indeed, poor Lucia."

"If these be Gods, there is no truth, no meaning in the name of virtue. If not these, what is God?"

"All things!" replied the young man solemnly. "Whatever moves, whatever is, is God. The universe is but the body, that clothes his eternal spirit; the winds are his breath; the sunshine is his smile; the gentle dews are the tears of his compassion! Time is the creature of his hand, eternity his dwelling place, virtue his law, his oracles the soul of every living man!"

"Beautiful," cried the girl. "Beautiful, if it were but true!"

"It is true—as true, as the sun in heaven; as certain as his course through the changeless seasons."

"How? how?" she asked eagerly. "What makes it certain?"

"The certainty of death!" he answered.

"Ah! death, death! that is a mystery indeed. And after that—"

"Everlasting life!"

"Ha! do you believe that too? They tell me all that is a fable, a folly, and a falsehood!"

"Perchance it would be well for them it were so."

"Yes!" she replied. "Yes! But who taught you?"

"Plato! Immortal Plato!"

"Ha! I will read him; I will read Plato."

"What! do you understand Greek too, Lucia?"

"How else should I have sung Anacreon, and learned the Lesbian arts of Sappho? But we have strayed wide of our subject, and time presses. Will you denounce, me, Catiline?"

"Not I! I will perish sooner."

"You will do so, and all Rome with you."

"Prove that to me, and——But it is impossible."

"Prove that to you, will you denounce him?"

"I will save Rome!"

"Will you denounce him?"

"If otherwise, I may preserve my country, no."

"Otherwise, you cannot. Speak! will you?"

"I must know all."

"You shall. Mark me, then judge." And rapidly, concisely, clearly, she revealed to him the dread secret. She concealed nothing, neither the ends of the conspiracy, nor the names of the conspirators. She asseverated to him the appalling fact, that half the noblest, eldest families of Rome, were either active members of the plot, sworn to spare no man, or secret well-wishers, content at first to remain neutral, and then to share the spoils of empire. According to her shewing, the Curii, the Portii, the Syllae, the Cethegi, the great Cornelian house, the Vargunteii, the Autronii, and the Longini, were all for the most part implicated, although some branches of the Portian and Cornelian houses had not been yet approached by the seducers. Crassus, she told him too, the richest citizen of Rome, and Caius Julius Caesar, the most popular, awaited but the first success to join the parricides of the Republic.

He listened thoughtfully, earnestly, until she had finished her narration, and then shook his head doubtfully.

"I think," he said, "you must be deceived, poor Lucia. I do not see how these things can be. These men, whom you have named, are all of the first houses of the state; have all of them, either themselves or their forefathers, bled for the commonwealth. How then should they now wish to destroy it? They are men, too, of all parties and all factions; the Syllae, the proudest and haughtiest aristocrats of Rome. Your father, also, belonged to the Dictator's faction, while the Cornelii and the Curii have belonged ever to the tribunes' party. How should this be? or how should those whose pride, whose interest, whose power alike, rest on the maintenance of their order, desire to mow down the Patrician houses, like grass beneath the scythe, and give their honors to the rabble? How, above all, should Crassus, whose estate is worth seven thousand talents,(16) consisting, too, of buildings in the heart of Rome, join with a party whose watch-words are fire and plunder, partition of estates, and death to the rich? You see yourself that these things cannot be; that they are not consistent. You must have been deceived by their insolent and drunken boasting!"

"Consistent!" she replied, with vehement and angry irony. "Still harping on consistency! Are virtuous men then consistent, that you expect vicious men to be so? Oh, the false wisdom, the false pride of man! You tell me these things cannot be—perhaps they cannot; but they are! I know it—I have heard, seen, partaken all! But if you can be convinced only by seeing that the plans of men, whose every action is insanity and frenzy, are wise and reasonable, perish yourself in your blindness, and let Rome perish with you! I can no more. Farewell! I leave you to your madness!"

"Hold! hold!" he cried, moved greatly by her vehemence, "are you indeed so sure of this? What, in the name of all the Gods, can be their motive?"

"Sure! sure!" she answered scornfully; "I thought I was speaking to a capable and clever man of action; I see that it is a mere dreamer, to whose waking senses I appeal vainly. If you be not sure, also, you must be weaker than I can conceive. Why, if there was no plot, would Catiline have slaughtered Medon, lest it should be revealed? Why would he, else, have striven to bind you by oaths; and to what, if not to schemes of sacrilege and treason? Why would he else have murdered Volero? why planted ambushes against your life? why would he now meditate my death, his own child's death, that I am forced to fly his house? Oh! in the wide world there is no such folly, as that of the over wise! Motive—motive enough have they! While the Patrician senate, and the Patrician Consuls hold with firm hands the government, full well they know, that in vain violence or fraud may strive to wrest it from them. Let but the people hold the reins of empire, and the first smooth-tongued, slippery demagogue, the first bloody, conquering soldier, grasps them, and is the King, Dictator, Emperor, of Rome! Never yet in the history of nations, has despotism sprung out of oligarchic sway! Never yet has democracy but yielded to the first despot's usurpation! They have not read in vain the annals of past ages, if you have done so, Paullus."

"Ha!" he exclaimed, "look they so far ahead? Ambition, then, it is but a new form of ambition?"

"Will you denounce them, Paullus?"

"At least, I will warn the Consul!"

"You must denounce them, or he will credit nothing."

"I will save Rome."

"Enough! enough! I am avenged, and thou shalt be happy. Go to the Consul, straightway! make your own terms, ask office, rank, wealth, power. He will grant all! and now, farewell! Me you will see no more forever! Farewell, Paullus Arvina, fare you well forever! And sometimes, when you are happy in the chaste arms of Julia, sometimes think, Paullus, of poor, unhappy, loving, lost, lost Lucia!"

"Whither, by all the Gods, I adjure you! whither would you go, Lucia?"

"Far hence! far hence, my Paullus. Where I may live obscure in tranquil solitude, where I may die when my time comes, in peace and innocence. In Rome I were not safe an hour!"

"Tell me where! tell me Lucia, how I may aid, how guard, console, or counsel you."

"You can do none of these things, Paullus. All is arranged for the best. Within an hour I shall be journeying hence, never to pass the gates, to hear the turbulent roar, to breathe the smoky skies, to taste the maddening pleasures, of glorious, guilty Rome! There is but one thing you can do, which will minister to my well-being—but one boon you can grant me. Will you?"

"And do you ask, Lucia?"

"Will you swear?" she inquired, with a faint melancholy smile. "Nay! it concerns no one but myself. You may swear safely."

"I do, by the God of faith!"

"Never seek, then, by word or deed, to learn whither I have gone, or where I dwell. Look! I am armed," and she drew out a dagger as she spoke. "If I am tracked or followed, whether by friend or foe, this will free me from persecution; and it shall do so, by the living lights of heaven! This, after all, is the one true, the last friend of the wretched. All hail to thee, healer of all intolerable anguish!" and she kissed the bright blade, before she consigned it to the sheath; and then, stretching out both hands to Paullus, she cried, "You have sworn—Remember!"

"And you promise me," he replied, "that, if at any time you need a friend, a defender, one who would lay down life itself to aid you, you will call on me, wheresoever I may be, fearless and undoubting. For, from the festive board, or the nuptial bed, from the most sacred altar of the Gods, or from the solemn funeral pyre, I will come instant to thy bidding. 'Lucia needs Paullus,' shall be words shriller than the war-trumpet's summons to my conscious soul."

"I promise you," she said, "willingly, most willingly. And now kiss me, Paullus. Julia herself would not forbid this last, sad, pious kiss! Not my lips! not my lips! Part my hair on my brows, and kiss me on the forehead, where your lips, years ago, shed freshness, and hope that has not yet died all away. Sweet, sweet! it is pure and sweet, it allays the fierce burning of my brain. Fare you well, Paul, and remember—remember Lucia Orestilla."

She withdrew herself from his arm modestly, as she spoke, lowered her veil, turned, and was gone. Many a day and week elapsed, and weeks were merged in months, ere any one, who knew her, again saw Catiline's unhappy, guilty daughter.



CHAPTER XII.

THE FORGE.

I saw a smith stand with his hammer thus, The whilst his iron did on anvil cool. KING JOHN.

It was the evening of the sixteenth day before the calends of November, or, according to modern numeration, the eighteenth of October, the eve of the consular elections, when a considerable number of rough hardy-looking men were assembled beneath the wide low-browed arch of a blacksmith's forge, situated near the intersection of the Cyprian Lane with the Sacred Way, and commanding a full view of the latter noble thoroughfare.

It was already fast growing dark, and the natural obscurity of the hour was increased by the thickness of the lowering clouds, which overspread the whole firmament of heaven, and seemed to portend a tempest. But from the jaws of the semicircular arch of Roman brick, within which the group was collected, a broad and wavering sheet of light was projected far into the street, and over the fronts of the buildings opposite, rising and falling in obedience to the blast of the huge bellows, which might be heard groaning and laboring within. The whole interior of the roomy vault was filled with a lurid crimson light, diversified at times by a brighter and more vivid glare as a column of living flame would shoot up from the embers, or long trains of radiant sparks leap from the bounding anvil. Against this clear back ground the moving figures of the strong limbed grimy giants, who plied their mighty sledges with incessant zeal on the red hot metal, were defined sharply and picturesquely; while alternately red lights and heavy shadows flickered across the forms and features of many other men, who stood around watching the progress of the work, and occasionally speaking rapidly, and with a good deal of gesticulation, at intervals when the preponderant din of hammers ceased, and permitted conversation to be carried on audibly.

At this moment, however, there was no such pause; for the embers in the furnace were at a white heat, and flashes of lambent flame were leaping out of the chimney top, and vanishing in the dark clouds overhead. A dozen bars of glowing steel had been drawn simultaneously from the charcoal, and thrice as many massive hammers were forging them into the rude shapes of weapons on the anvils, which, notwithstanding their vast weight, appeared to leap and reel, under the blows that were rained upon them faster than hail in winter.

But high above the roar of the blazing chimney, above the din of the groaning stithy, high pealed the notes of a wild Alcaic ode, to which, chaunted by the stentorian voices of the powerful mechanics, the clanging sledges made a stormy but appropriate music. "Strike, strike the iron," thus echoed the stirring strain,

Strike, strike the iron, children o' Mulciber, Hot from the charcoal cheerily glimmering! Swing, swing, my boys, high swing the sledges! Heave at it, heave at it, all! Together! Great Mars, the war God, watches ye laboring Joyously. Joyous watches the gleam o' the Bright sparkles, upsoaring the faster, Faster as our merry blows revive them. Well knoweth He that clang. It arouses him, Heard far aloof! He laughs on us hammering The sword, the clear harness of iron, Armipotent paramour o' Venus.—— Red glows the charcoal. Bend to the task, my boys, Time flies apace, and speedily night cometh, When we no more may ply the anvil; Fate cometh eke, i' the murky midnight. Mark ye the pines, which rooted i' rocky ground,(17) Brave Euroclydon's onset at evening. Day dawns. The tree, which stood the tallest, Preeminent i' the leafy greenwood, Now lies the lowest. Safely the arbutus, Which bent before him, flourishes, and the sun Wakens the thrush, which slept securely Nestled in its emerald asylum. So, when the war-shout peals i' the noon o' night, Rousing the sleepers fearful, in ecstacy When slaves avenge their wrongs, arising Strong i' the name o' liberty new born, When fury spares not beauty nor innocence, First flame the grandest domes. I' the massacre, First fall the noblest. Lowly virtue Haply the shade o' poverty defends. Forge then the broad sword. Quickly the night cometh, When red the streets with gore o' the mightiest Shall fiercely flow, like Tiber in flood. Rise then, avenger, the time it hath come! Wake bloody tyrants from merry banquetting, From downy couches, snowy-bosomed women And ruby wine-cups, wake—The avenger Springs to his arms, for the time it hath come!

The wild strain ceased, and with it the clang of the hammers, the bars of steel being already beaten into the form of those short massive two-edged blades, which were the Roman's national and all victorious weapon. But, as it ceased, a deep stern hum of approbation followed, elicited probably by some real or fancied similitude between the imagery of the song, and the circumstances of the auditors, who were to a man of the lowest order of plebeians, taught from their cradles to regard the nobles, and perhaps with too much cause, as their natural enemies and oppressors. When the brief applause was at an end, one of the elder bystanders addressed the principal workman, at the forge, in a low voice.

"You are incautious, Caius Crispus, to sing such songs as this, and at such a time, too."

"Tush, Bassus," answered the other, "it is you who are too timid. What harm is there, I should like to know, in singing an old Greek song done into Latin words? I like the rumbling measure, for my part; it suits well with the clash and clang of our rude trade. For the song, there is no offence in it; and, for the time, it is a very good time; and, to poor men like us, a better time is coming!"

"Oh! well said. May it be so!" exclaimed several voices in reply to the stout smith's sharp words.

But the old man was not so easily satisfied, for he answered at once. "If any of the nobles heard it, they would soon find offence in it, my Caius!"

"Oh! the nobles—the nobles, and the Fathers! I am tired of hearing of the nobles. For my part, I do not see what makes them noble. Are they a whit stronger, or braver, or better man than I, or Marcus here, or any of us? I trow not."

"Wiser—they are at least wiser, Caius," said the old man once more, "in this, if in nothing else, that they keep their own councils, and stand by their own order."

"Aye! in oppressing the poor!" replied a new speaker.

"Right, Marcus," said a second; "let them wrangle as much as they may with one another, for their dice, their women, or their wine; in this at least they all agree, in trampling down the poor."

"There is a good time coming," replied the smith; "and it is very near at hand. Now, Niger," he continued, addressing one of his workmen, "carry these blades down to the lower workshop; let Rufus fit them instantly with horn handles; and then, see you to their grinding! Never heed polishing them very much, but give them right keen edges, and good stabbing points."

"I do not know," answered the other man to the first part of the smith's speech. "I am not so sure of that."

"You don't know what I mean," said Crispus, scornfully.

"Yes. I do—right well. But I am not so confident, as you are, in these new leaders."

The smith looked at him keenly for a moment, and then said significantly, "do you know?"

"Aye! do I," said the other; and, a moment afterward, when the eyes of the bystanders were not directly fixed on him, he drew his hand edgewise across his throat, with the action of one severing the windpipe.

Caius Crispus nodded assent, but made a gesture of caution, glancing his eye toward one or two of the company, and whispering a moment afterward, "I am not sure of those fellows."

"I see, I see; but they shall learn nothing from what I say." Then raising his voice, he added, "what I mean, Caius, is simply this, that I have no so very great faith in the promises of this Sergius Catiline, even if he should be elected. He was a sworn friend to Sylla, the people's worst enemy; and never had one associate of the old Marian party. Believe me, he only wants our aid to set himself up on the horse of state authority; and when he is firm in the saddle, he will ride us down under the hoofs of patrician tyranny, as hard as any Cato, or Pompey, of them all."

Six or seven of the foremost group, immediately about the anvil when this discourse was going on, interchanged quick glances, as the man used the word elected, on which he laid a strong and singular emphasis, and nodded slightly, as indicating that they understood his more secret meaning. All, however, except Crispus, the owner of the forge, seemed to be moved by what he advanced; and the foreman of the anvil, after musing for a moment, as he leaned on his heavy sledge, said, "I believe you are right; no one but a Plebeian can truly mean well, or be truly fitted for a leader to Plebeians."

"You are no wiser than Crispus," interposed the old man, who had spoken first, in a low angry whisper. "Do you want to discourage these fellows from rising to the cry, when it shall be set up? If this be all that you can do, it were as well to close the forge at once."

"Which I shall do forthwith," said Caius Crispus; "for I have got through my work and my lads are weary; but do not you go away, my gossips; nor you either," he added, speaking to the man whom he had at first suspected, "tarry you, under one pretext or other; we will have a cup of wine, as soon as I have got rid of these fellows. Here, Aulus," turning to his foreman, "take some coin out of my purse, there it hangs by my clean tunic in the corner, and go round to the wine shop, and bring thence a skinful of the best Sabine vintage; and some of you bar up the door, all but the little wicket. And now, my friends, good night; it is very late, and I am going to shut up the shop. Good night; and remember that the only hope of us working men lies in the election of Catiline tomorrow. Be in the Campus early, with all your friends; and hark ye, you were best take your knives under your tunics, lest the proud nobles should attempt to drive us from the ballot."

"We will, we will!" exclaimed several voices. "We will not be cozened out of our votes, or bullied out of them either. But how is this? do not you vote in your class?"

"I vote with my class! with my fellow Plebeians and mechanics, I would say! What if I be one of the armorers of the first class, think you that I will vote with the proud senators and insolent knights? No, brethren, not one of us, nor of the carpenters either, nor of the trumpeters, or horn-blowers! Plebeians we are, and Plebeians we will vote! and let me tell you to look sharp to me, on the Campus; and whatever I do, so do ye. Be sure that good will come of it to the people!"

"We will, we will!" responded all his hearers, now unanimous. "Brave heart! stout Caius Crispus! We will have you a tribune one of these days! but good night, good night!"

And, with the words, all left the forge, except the smith and his peculiar workmen, and two or three others, all clients of the Praetor Lentulus, and all in some degree associates in the conspiracy. None of them, however, were initiated fully, except Caius himself, his foreman, Aulus, the aged Bassus, and the stranger; who, though unknown to any one present, had given satisfactory evidence that he was privy to the most atrocious portions of the plot. The wine was introduced immediately, and after a deep draught, circulated more than once, the conversation was resumed by the initiated, who were now left alone.

"And do you believe," said the stranger, addressing Caius Crispus, "that Catiline and his companions have any real view to the redress of grievances, the regeneration of the state, or the equalization of conditions?"

"Not in the least, I," answered the swordsmith. "Do you?"

"I did once."

"I never did."

"Then, in the name of all the Gods, why did you join with them?"

"Because by the ruin of the great and noble, the poor must be gainers. Because I owe what I can never pay. Because I lust for what I can never win—luxury, beauty, wealth, and power! And if there come a civil strife, with proscription, confiscation, massacre, it shall go hard with Caius Crispus, if he achieve not greatness!"

"And you," said the man, turning short round, without replying to the smith, and addressing the aged Bassus, "why did you join the plotters, you who are so crafty, so sagacious, and yet so earnest in the cause?"

"Because I have wrongs to avenge," answered the old man fiercely; a fiery flush crimsoning his sallow face, and his eye beaming lurid rage. "Wrongs, to repay which all the blood that flows in patrician veins were but too small a price!"

"Ha?" said the other, in a tone half meditative and half questioning, but in truth thinking little of the speaker, and reflecting only on the personal nature of the motives, which seemed to instigate them all. "Ha, is it indeed so?"

"Man," cried the old conspirator, springing forward and catching him by the arm. "Have you a wife, a child, a sister? If so, listen! you can understand me! I am, as you see old, very old! I have scars, also, all in front; honorable scars, of wounds inflicted by the Moorish assagays, of Jugurtha's desert horsemen—by the huge broad swords of the Teutones and Cimbri. My son, my only son fell, as an eagle-bearer, in the front rank of the hastati of the brave tenth legion—for we had wealth in those days, and both fought and voted in the centuries of the first class. But our fields were uncultivated, while we were shedding our best blood for the state; and to complete the ruin, my rural slaves broke loose, and joined Spartacus the gladiator. Taken, they died upon the cross; and I was quite undone. Law suits and usury ate up the rest; and, for these eight years past, old Bassus has been penniless, and often cold, and always hungry. But if this had been all, it is a soldier's part to bear cold and hunger—but not to bear disgrace. Man, there have been gyves on these legs—the whip has scarred these shoulders! Ye great Gods! the whip! for what have the poor to do with their Portian or Valerian laws? Nor was this all—the eagle-bearer left a child, a sweet, fair, gentle girl, the image of my gallant boy, the only solace of my famishing old age. I told you she was fair—fatally fair—too fair for a plebeian's daughter, a plebeian's wife! Her beauty caught the lustful eyes, inflamed the brutal heart of a patrician, one of the great Cornelii. It is enough! She was torn from my house, dishonored, and sent home, to die by her own hand, that would not pardon that involuntary sin! She died; the censors heard the tale; and scoffed at the teller of it! and that Cornelius yet sits in the senate; those censors who approved his guilt yet live—I say live! Is not that cause enough why I should join the plotters?"

"I cannot answer, No!" replied the other; "and you, Aulus, what is your reason?"

"I would win me a noble paramour. Hortensia's Julia is very soft and beautiful."

The stranger looked at him steadily for a moment, and an expression of disgust and horror crept over his bold face. "Alas!" he said at length, speaking, it would seem, to himself rather than to the others, "poor Rome! unhappy country!"

But, as he spoke, the strong smith, whose suspicion would seem to have been excited, stepped forward and laid his hand upon the stranger's shoulder. "Look you," he said, "master. None of us know you here, I think, and we should all of us be glad to know, both who you are, and, if indeed you be of the faction, wherefore you joined it, that you so closely scrutinize our motives."

"Because I was a fool, Caius Crispus; because I believed that, for a great stake, Romans might yet forget self, base and sordid self, and act as becomes patriots and men! Because I dreamed, smith, till morning light came back, and I awakened, and—"

"And the dream!" asked the smith eagerly, grasping the handle of his heavy hammer firmly, and setting his teeth hard.

"Had vanished," replied the other calmly, and looking him full in the eye.

"Bar the door, Aulus," cried the smith, hastily. "This fellow must die here, or he will betray us," and he caught him by the throat, as he spoke, with an iron grip, to prevent him from calling out or giving the alarm.

But the stranger, though not to be compared in bulk or muscular proportions with the gigantic artizan, shook off his grasp with contemptuous ease, and answered with a scornful smile,

"Betray you!—tush, I am Fulvius Flaccus."

Had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of the smith, he could not have recoiled with wilder wonder.

"What, Fulvius Flaccus, to whose great wrongs all injuries endured by us are but as flea-bites! Fulvius, the grandson of that Fulvius Flaccus, who—"

"Was murdered by Opimius, while striving for the liberties of Romans. But what is this! By Mars and Quirinus! there is something afoot without!"

And, as he uttered the words, he sprang to the wicket, which Aulus had not fastened, and gazed out earnestly into the darkness, through which the regular and steady tramp of men, advancing in ordered files, could now be heard distinctly.

The others were beside him in an instant, with terror and amazement on their faces.

They had not long to wait, before the cause of their alarm became visible. It was a band of some five hundred stout young men of the upper classes, well armed with swords and the oblong bucklers of the legion, though wearing neither casque nor cuirass, led by a curule aedile, who was accompanied by ten or twelve of the equestrian order, completely armed, and preceded by his apparitores or beadles, and half a dozen torch-bearers.

These men passed swiftly on, in treble file, marching as fast as they could down the Sacred Way, until they reached the intersection of the street of Apollo; by which they proceeded straight up the ascent of the Palatine, whereon they were soon lost to view, among the splendid edifices that covered its slope and summit.

"By all the Gods!" cried Caius Crispus, "This is exceedingly strange! An armed guard at this time of night!"

"Hist! here is something more."

And, as old Bassus spoke, Antonius, the consul, who was supposed to be attached to the faction of Catiline, came down a bye-street, from the lower end of the Carinae, preceded by his torch-bearers, and followed by a lictor(18) with his fasces. He was in full dress too, as one of the presiding magistrates of the senate, and bore in his hand his ivory sceptre, surmounted by an eagle.

As soon as he had passed the door of the forge, Crispus stepped out into the street, motioning his guests to follow him, and desiring his foreman to lock the door.

"Let us follow the Consul, at a distance," he exclaimed, "my Bassus; for, as our Fulvius says, there is assuredly something afoot; and it may be that it shall be well for us to know it: Come, let us follow quickly."

They hurried onward, as he proposed; and keeping some twenty or thirty paces in the rear of the Consul's train, soon reached the foot of the street of Apollo. At this point, however, Antonius paused with his lictor; for, in the opposite direction coming up from the Cerolian place toward the Forum, another line of torches might be seen flaming through the darkness, and, even at that distance, the axe heads of the lictors were visible, as they flashed out by fits in the red torch-light.

"By all the Gods!" whispered Bassus, "it is the other consul, the new man from Arpinum. Believe me, my friends, this bodes no good to us! The Senate must have been convoked suddenly—and lo! here come the fathers. Look, look! this is stern Cato."

And, almost as he said the words, a powerfully made and very noble looking man passed so near as to brush the person of the mechanic with the folds of his toga. His face, which was strongly marked, was stern certainly; but it was with the sternness of gravity and deep thought, coupled perhaps with something of melancholy—for it might be that he despaired at times of man's condition in this world, and of his prospects in the next—not of austerity or pride. His garb was plain in the extreme, and, although his tunic displayed the broad crimson facings, and his robe the passmenting of senatorial rank, both were of the commonest materials, and the narrowest and most simple cut.

"Hail, noble Cato!" said the mechanic, as the senator passed by; but his voice faltered as he spoke, and there was something hollow and heartless in the tones, which conveyed the greeting.

Cato raised his eyes, which had been fixed on the ground in meditation, and perused the features of the speaker with a severe and scrutinizing gaze; and then, shaking his head sternly, as if dissatisfied with the result of his observation, "This is no time of night, sirrah smith," he said, "for thee, or such as thou, to be abroad. Thy daily work done, thou shouldst be at home with thy wife and children, not seeking profligate adventures, or breeding foul sedition in the streets. Go home! go home! for shame on thee! thou art known and marked."

And the severe and virtuous noble strode onward, unattended he by any torch-bearer, or freedman, and soon joined his worthy friend, the great Latin orator, who had come up, and having united his train to that of the other consul, was moving up the Palatine.

In the meantime senator after senator arrived, some alone, with their slaves or freedmen lighting them along the streets; others in groups of two or three, all hurrying toward the Palatine. The smith and his friends, who had been at first the sole spectators of the shew, were now every moment joined by more and more of the rabble, until a great concourse was assembled; through which the nobles had some difficulty in forcing their way toward the Temple of Apollo, in which their order was assembling, wherefore as yet they knew not.

At first the crowd was orderly enough, and quiet; but gradually beginning to ferment and grow warm, as it were by the closeness of its packing, cheers were heard, and loud acclamations, as any member of the popular faction made his way through it; and groans and yells and even curses succeeded, as any of the leaders of the aristocratic party strove to part its reluctant masses.

And now a louder burst of acclamations, than any which had yet been heard, rang through the streets, causing the very roofs to tremble.

"What foolery have we here?" said the smith very sullenly, who, though he responded nothing to it, had by no means recovered from the rebuke of Cato. "Oh! yes! I see, I see," and he too added the power of his stentorian lungs to the clamor, as a young senator, splendidly dressed, and of an aspect that could not fail to attract attention, entered the little space, which had been kept open at the corner of the two streets, by the efforts of an aedile and his beadles, who had just arrived on the ground.

He was not much, if at all, above the middle size, but admirably proportioned, whether for feats of agility and strength, or for the lighter graces of society. But it was his face more especially, and the magnificent expression of his features, that first struck the beholder—the broad imaginative brow, the keen large lustrous eye, pervading, clear, undazzled as the eagle's, the bold Roman nose, the resolute curve of the clean-cut mouth, full of indomitable pride and matchless energy—all these bespoke at once the versatile and various genius of the great statesman, orator, and captain, who was to be thereafter.

At this time, however, although he was advancing toward middle age, and had already shaken off some of the trammels which luxurious vice and heedless extravagance had cast around his young puissant intellect, he had achieved nothing either of fame or power. He had, it is true, given signs of rare intellect, but as yet they were signs only. Though his friends looked forward confidently to the time, when they should see him the first citizen of the republic; and it is more than possible, that in his own heart he contemplated even now the attainment of a more glorious, if more perilous elevation.

The locks of this noble looking personage, though not arranged in that effeminate fashion, which has been mentioned as characteristic of Cethegus and some others, were closely curled about his brow—for he, as yet, exhibited no tendency to that baldness, for which in after years he was remarkable—and reeked with the choicest perfumes. He wore the crimson-bordered toga of his senatorial rank, but under it, as it waved loosely to and fro, might be observed the gaudy hues of a violet colored banqueting dress, sprinkled with flowers of gold, as if he had been disturbed from some festive board by the summons to council.

As he passed through the crowd, from which loud rose the shout, following him as he moved along—"Hail, Caius Caesar! long live the noble Caesar!"—his slaves scattered gold profusely among the multitude, who fought and scrambled for the glittering coin, still keeping up their clamorous greeting; while the dispenser of the wasteful largesse appearing to know every one, and to forget no face or name, even of the humblest, had a familiar smile and a cheery word for each citizen.

"Ha! Bassus, my old hero!" he exclaimed, "it is long since thou hast been to visit me. That proves, I hope, that things go better now-a-days at home. But come and see me, Bassus; I have something for thee to keep the cold from thy hearth, this freezing weather."

And he paused not to receive an answer, but moved forward a step or two, till his eye fell upon the swordsmith.

"What, Caius," he said, "sturdy Caius, absent from his forge so early—but I forgot, I forgot! you are a politician, perhaps you can tell me why they have roused me from the best cup of Massic I have tasted this ten years. What is the coil, Caius Crispus?"

"Nay! I know not," replied the mechanic, "I was about to ask the same of you, noble Caesar!"

"I am the worst man living of whom to inquire," replied the patrician, with a careless smile. "I cannot even guess, unless perchance"—but as he spoke, he discovered, standing beside the smith, the man who had called himself Fulvius Flaccus, and interrupting himself instantly, he fixed a long and piercing gaze upon him, and then exclaimed "Ha! is it thou?" with an expression of astonishment, not all unmixed with vexation.

The next moment he stepped close up to him, whispered a word into his ear, and hurried with an altered air up the steep street which scaled the Palatine.

A minute or two afterward, Crispus turned to address this man, but he too was gone.

In quick succession senator after senator now came up the gentle slope of the Sacred Way, until almost all the distinguished men in Rome, whether for good or for evil, had undergone the scrutiny of the group collected around Caius Crispus.

But it was not till among the last that Catiline strode by, gnawing his nether lip uneasily, with his wild sunken eyes glaring suspiciously about him. He spoke to no one, until he came opposite the smith, on whom he frowned darkly, exclaiming, "What do you here? Go home, sirrah, go home!" and as Caius dropped his bold eyes, crest-fallen and abashed, he added in a lower tone, so that, save Bassus only, none of the crowd could hear him, "Wait for me at my house. Evil is brewing!"

Not a word more was spoken. Crispus and the old man soon extricated themselves from the throng and went their way; and in a little time afterward the multitude was dispersed, rather summarily, by a band of armed men under the Praetor Pomptinus, who cleared with very little delicacy the confines of the Palatine, whereon it was announced that the senate were now in secret session.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE DISCLOSURE.

Maria montesque polliceri caepit, Minari interdum ferro, nisi obnoxia foret. SALLUST.

A woman, master. LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

Among all those of Senatorial rank—and they were very many—who were participants of the intended treason, one alone was absent from the assemblage of the Order on that eventful night.

The keen unquiet eye of the arch-traitor missed Curius from his place, as it ran over the known faces of the conspirators, on whom he reckoned for support.

Curius was absent.

Nor did his absence, although it might well be, although indeed it was, accidental, diminish anything of Catiline's anxiety. For, though he fully believed him trusty and faithful to the end, though he felt that the man was linked to him indissolubly by the consciousness of common crimes, he knew him also to be no less vain than he was daring. And, while he had no fear of intentional betrayal, he apprehended the possibility of involuntary disclosures, that might be perilous, if not fatal, in the present juncture.

It has been left on record of this Curius, by one who knew him well, and was himself no mean judge of character, that he possessed not the faculty of concealing any thing he had heard, or even of dissembling his own crimes; and Catiline was not one to overlook or mistake so palpable a weakness.

But the truth was, that knowing his man thoroughly, he was aware that, with the bane, he bore about with him, in some degree, its antidote. For so vast and absurd were his vain boastings, and so needless his exaggerations of his own recklessness, blood-thirstiness, and crime, that hitherto his vaporings had excited rather ridicule than fear.

The time was however coming, when they were to awaken distrust, and lead to disclosure.

It was perfectly consistent with the audacity of Catiline—an audacity, which, though natural, stood him well in stead, as a mask to cover deep designs—that even now, when he felt himself to be more than suspected, instead of avoiding notoriety, and shunning the companionship of his fellow traitors, he seemed to covet observation, and to display himself in connection with his guilty partners, more openly than heretofore.

But neither Lentulus, nor Vargunteius, nor the Syllae, nor any other of the plotters had seen Curius, or could inform him of his whereabout. And, ere they separated for the night, amid the crash of the contending elements above, and the roar of the turbulent populace below, doubt, and almost dismay, had sunk into the hearts of several the most daring, so far as mere mortal perils were to be encountered, but the most abject, when superstition was joined with conscious guilt to appal and confound them.

Catiline left the others, and strode away homeward, more agitated and unquiet than his face or words, or anything in his demeanor, except his irregular pace, and fitful gestures indicated.

Dark curses quivered unspoken on his tongue—the pains of hell were in his heart already.

Had he but known the whole, how would his fury have blazed out into instant action.

At the very moment when the Senate was so suddenly convoked on the Palatine, a woman of rare loveliness waited alone, in a rich and voluptuous chamber of a house not far removed from the scene of those grave deliberations.

The chamber, in which she reclined alone on a pile of soft cushions, might well have been the shrine of that bland queen of love and pleasure, of whom its fair tenant was indeed an assiduous votaress. For there was nothing, which could charm the senses, or lap the soul in luxurious and effeminate ease, that was not there displayed.

The walls glowed with the choicest specimens of the Italian pencil, and the soft tones and harmonious colouring were well adapted to the subjects, which were the same in all—voluptuous and sensual love.

Here Venus rose from the crisp-smiling waves, in a rich atmosphere of light and beauty—there Leda toyed with the wreathed neck and ruffled plumage of the enamoured swan—in this compartment, Danae lay warm and languid, impotent to resist the blended power of the God's passion and his gold—in that, Ariadne clung delighted to the bosom of the rosy wine-God.

The very atmosphere of the apartment was redolent of the richest perfumes, which streamed from four censers of chased gold placed on a tall candelabra of wrought bronze in the corners of the room. A bowl of stained glass on the table was filled with musk roses, the latest of the year; and several hyacinths in full bloom added their almost overpowering scent to the aromatic odours of the burning incense.

Armed chairs, with downy pillows, covered with choice embroidered cloths of Calabria, soft ottomans and easy couches, tables loaded with implements of female luxury, musical instruments, drawings, and splendidly illuminated rolls of the amatory bards and poetesses of the Egean islands, completed the picture of the boudoir of the Roman beauty.

And on a couch piled with the Tyrian cushions, which yielded to the soft impress of her lovely form, well worthy of the splendid luxury with which she was surrounded, lay the unrivalled Fulvia, awaiting her expected lover.

If she was lovely in her rich attire, as she appeared at the board of Catiline, with jewels in her bosom, and her bright ringlets of luxuriant gold braided in fair array, far lovelier was she now, as she lay there reclined, with those bright ringlets all dishevelled, and falling in a flood of wavy silken masses, over her snowy shoulders, and palpitating bosom; with all the undulating outlines of her superb form, unadorned, and but scantily concealed by a loose robe of snow-white linen.

Her face was slightly flushed with a soft carnation tinge, her blue eyes gleamed with unusual brightness. And by the fluttering of her bosom, and the nervous quivering of her slender fingers, as they leaned on a tripod of Parian marble which stood beside the couch, it was evident that she was labouring under some violent excitement.

"He comes not," she said. "And it is waxing late. He has again failed me! and if he have—ruin—ruin!—Debts pressing me in every quarter, and no hope but from him. Alfenus the usurer will lend no more—my farms all mortgaged to the utmost, a hundred thousand sesterces of interest, due these last Calends, and unpaid as yet. What can I do?—what hope for? In him there is no help—none! Nay! It is vain to think of it; for he is amorous as ever, and, could he raise the money, would lavish millions on me for one kiss. No! he is bankrupt too; and all his promises are but wild empty boastings. What, then, is left to me?" she cried aloud, in the intensity of her perturbation. "Most miserable me! My creditors will seize on all—all—all! and poverty—hard, chilling, bitter poverty, is staring in my face even now. Ye Gods! ye Gods! And I can not—can not live poor. No more rich dainties, and rare wines! no downy couches and soft perfumes! No music to induce voluptuous slumbers! no fairy-fingered slaves to fan the languid brow into luxurious coolness! No revelry, no mirth, no pleasure! Pleasure that is so sweet, so enthralling! Pleasure for which I have lived only, without which I must die! Die! By the great Gods! I will die! What avails life, when all its joys are gone? Or what is death, but one momentary pang, and then—quiet? Yes! I will die. And the world shall learn that the soft Epicurean can vie with the cold Stoic in carelessness of living, and contempt of death—that the warm votaress of Aphrodite can spend her glowing life-blood as prodigally as the stern follower of Virtue! Lucretia died, and was counted great and noble, because she cared not to survive her honour! Fulvia will perish, wiser, as soon as she shall have outlived her capacity for pleasure!"

She spoke enthusiastically, her bright eyes flashing a strange fire, and her white bosom panting with the strong and passionate excitement; but in a moment her mood was changed. A smile, as if at her own vehemence, curled her lip; her glance lost its quick, sharp wildness. She clapped her hands together, and called aloud,

"Ho! AEgle! AEgle!"

And at the call a beautiful Greek girl entered the chamber, voluptuous as her mistress in carriage and demeanor, and all too slightly robed for modesty, in garments that displayed far more than they concealed of her rare symmetry.

"Bring wine, my girl," cried Fulvia; "the richest Massic; and, hark thee, fetch thy lyre. My soul is dark to-night, and craves a joyous note to kindle it to life and rapture."

The girl bowed and retired; but in a minute or two returned, accompanied by a dark-eyed Ionian, bearing a Tuscan flask of the choice wine, and a goblet of crystal, embossed with emeralds and sapphires, imbedded, by a process known to the ancients but now lost, in the transparent glass.

A lyre of tortoiseshell was in the hands of AEgle, and a golden plectrum with which to strike its chords; she had cast loose her abundant tresses of dark hair, and decked her brows with a coronal of myrtle mixed with roses, and as she came bounding with sinuous and graceful gestures through the door, waving her white arms with the dazzling instruments aloft, she might have represented well a young priestess of the Cyprian queen, or the light Muse of amorous song.

The other girl filled out a goblet of the amber-coloured wine, the fragrance of which overpowered, for a moment, as it mantled on the goblet's brim, the aromatic perfumes which loaded the atmosphere of the apartment.

And Fulvia raised it to her lips, and sipped it slowly, and delightedly, suffering it to glide drop by drop between her rosy lips, to linger on her pleased palate, luxuriating in its soft richness, and dwelling long and rapturously on its flavour.

After a little while, the goblet was exhausted, a warmer hue came into her velvet cheeks, a brighter spark danced in her azure eyes, and as she motioned the Ionian slave-girl to replenish the cup and place it on the tripod at her elbow, she murmured in a low languid tone,

"Sing to me, now—sing to me, AEgle."

And in obedience to her word the lovely girl bent her fair form over the lute, and, after a wild prelude full of strange thrilling melodies, poured out a voice as liquid and as clear, aye! and as soft, withal, as the nightingale's, in a soft Sapphic love-strain full of the glorious poetry of her own lovely language.

Where in umbrageous shadow of the greenwood Buds the gay primrose i' the balmy spring time; Where never silent, Philomel, the wildest Minstrel of ether,

Pours her high notes, and caroling, delighted In the cool sun-proof canopy of the ilex Hung with ivy green or a bloomy dog-rose Idly redundant,

Charms the fierce noon with melody; in the moonbeam Where the coy Dryads trip it unmolested All the night long, to merry dithyrambics Blissfully timing

Their rapid steps, which flit across the knot grass Lightly, nor shake one flower of the blue-bell; Where liquid founts and rivulets o' silver Sweetly awaken

Clear forest echoes with unearthly laughter; There will I, dearest, on a bank be lying Where the wild thyme blows ever, and the pine tree Fitfully murmurs

Slumber inspiring. Come to me, my dearest, On the fresh greensward, as a downy bride-bed, Languid, unzoned, and amorous, reclining; Like Ariadne,

When the blythe wine-God, from Olympus hoary, Wooed the soft mortal tremulously yielding All her enchantments to the mighty victor— Happy Ariadne!

There will I, dearest, every frown abandon; Nor do thou fear, nor hesitate to press me, Since, if I chide, 'tis but a girl's reproval, Faintly reluctant.

Doubt not I love thee, whether I return thy Kisses in delight, or avert demurely Lips that in truth burn to be kissed the closer, Eyes that avoid thee,

Loth to confess how amorously glowing Pants the fond heart. Oh! tarry not, but urge me Coy to consent; and if a blush alarm thee, Shyly revealing

Sentiments deep as the profound of Ocean, If a sigh, faltered in an hour of anguish, Seem to implore thee—pity not. The maiden Often adores thee

Most if offending. Never, oh! believe me, Did the faint-hearted win a girl's devotion, Nor the true girl frown when a youth disarmed her Dainty denial.

While she was yet singing, the curtains which covered the door were put quietly aside, and with a noiseless step Curius entered the apartment, unseen by the fair vocalist, whose back was turned to him, and made a sign to Fulvia that she should not appear to notice his arrival.

The haggard and uneasy aspect, which was peculiar to this man—the care-worn expression, half-anxious and half-jaded, which has been previously described, was less conspicuous on this occasion than ever it had been before, since the light lady loved him. There was a feverish flush on his face, a joyous gleam in his dark eye, and a self-satisfied smile lighting up all his features, which led her to believe at first that he had been drinking deeply; and secondly, that by some means or other he had succeeded in collecting the vast sum she had required of him, as the unworthy price of future favours.

In a minute or two, the voluptuous strain ended; and, ere she knew that any stranger listened to her amatory warblings, the arm of Curius was wound about her slender waist, and his half-laughing voice was ringing in her ear,

"Well sung, my lovely Greek, and daintily advised!—By my faith! sweet one, I will take thee at thy word!"

"No! no!" cried the girl, extricating herself from his arms, by an elastic spring, before his lips could touch her cheek. "No! no! you shall not kiss me. Kiss Fulvia, she is handsomer than I am, and loves you too. Come, Myrrha, let us leave them."

And, with an arch smile and coquettish toss of her pretty head, she darted through the door, and was followed instantly by the other slave-girl, well trained to divine the wishes of her mistress.

"AEgle is right, by Venus!" exclaimed Curius, drawing nearer to his mistress; "you are more beautiful to-night than ever."

"Flatterer!" murmured the lady, suffering him to enfold her in his arms, and taste her lips for a moment. But the next minute she withdrew herself from his embrace, and said, half-smiling, half-abashed, "But flattery will not pay my debts. Have you brought me the moneys for Alfenus, my sweet Curius? the hundred thousand sesterces, you promised me?"

"Perish the dross!" cried Curius, fiercely. "Out on it! when I come to you, burning with love and passion, you cast cold water on the flames, by your incessant cry for gold. By all the Gods! I do believe, that you love me only for that you can wring from my purse."

"If it be so," replied the lady, scornfully, "I surely do not love you much; seeing it is three months, since you have brought me so much as a ring, or a jewel for a keepsake! But you should rather speak the truth out plainly, Curius," she continued, in an altered tone, "and confess honestly that you care for me no longer. If you loved me as once you did, you would not leave me to be goaded by these harpies. Know you not—why do I ask? you do know that my house, my slaves, nay! that my very jewels and my garments, are mine but upon sufferance. It wants but a few days of the calends of November, and if they find the interest unpaid, I shall be cast forth, shamed, and helpless, into the streets of Rome!"

"Be it so!" answered Curius, with an expression which she could not comprehend. "Be it so! Fulvia; and if it be, you shall have any house in Rome you will, for your abode. What say you to Cicero's, in the Carinae? or the grand portico of Quintus Catulus, rich with the Cimbric spoils? or, better yet, that of Crassus, with its Hymettian columns, on the Palatine? Aye! aye! the speech of Marcus Brutus was prophetic; who termed it, the other day, the house of Venus on the Palatine! And you, my love, shall be the goddess of that shrine! It shall be yours to-morrow, if you will—so you will drive away the clouds from that sweet brow, and let those eyes beam forth—by all the Gods!"—he interrupted himself—"I will kiss thee!"

"By all the Gods! thou shalt not—now, nor for evermore!" she replied, in her turn growing very angry.—"Thou foolish and mendacious boaster! what? dost thou deem me mad or senseless, to assail me with such drivelling folly? Begone, fool! or I will call my slaves—I have slaves yet, and, if it be the last deed of service they do for me, they shall spurn thee, like a dog, from my doors.—Art thou insane, or only drunken, Curius?" she added, breaking off from her impetuous railing, into a cool sarcastic tone, that stung him to the quick.

"You shall see whether of the two, Harlot!" he replied furiously, thrusting his hand into the bosom of his tunic, as if to seek a weapon.

"Harlot!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet, the hot blood rushing to her brow in torrents—"dare you say this to me?"

"Dare! do you call this daring?" answered the savage. "This? what would you call it, then, to devastate the streets of Rome with flame and falchion—to hurl the fabric of the state headlong down from the blazing Capitol—to riot in the gore of senators, patricians, consulars!—What, to aspire to be the lords and emperors of the universe?"

"What mean you?" she exclaimed, moved greatly by his vehemence, and beginning to suspect that this was something more than his mere ordinary boasting and exaggeration. "What can you mean? oh! tell me; if you do love me, as you once did, tell me, Curius!" and with rare artifice she altered her whole manner in an instant, all the expression of eye, lip, tone and accent, from the excess of scorn and hatred, to blandishment and fawning softness.

"No!" he replied sullenly. "I will not tell you—no! You doubt me, distrust me, scorn me—no! I will tell you nothing! I will have all I wish or ask for, on my own terms—you shall grant all, or die!"

And he unsheathed his dagger, as he spoke, and grasping her wrist violently with his left hand, offered the weapon at her throat with his right—"You shall grant all, or die!"

"Never!"—she answered—"never!" looking him steadily yet softly in the face, with her beautiful blue eyes. "To fear I will never yield, whatever I may do, to love or passion. Strike, if you will—strike a weak woman, and so prove your daring—it will be easier, if not so noble, as slaying senators and consuls!"

"Perdition!" cried the fierce conspirator, "I will kill her!" And with the word he raised his arm, as if to strike; and, for a moment, the guilty and abandoned sensualist believed that her hour was come.

Yet she shrunk not, nor quailed before his angry eye, nor uttered any cry or supplication. She would have died that moment, as carelessly as she had lived. She would have died, acting out her character to the last sand of life, with the smile on her lip, and the soft languor in her melting eye, in all things an Epicurean.

But the fierce mood of Curius changed. Irresolute, and impotent of evil, in a scarce less degree than he was sanguinary, rash, unprincipled, and fearless, it is not one of the least strange events, connected with a conspiracy the whole of which is strange, and much almost inexplicable, that a man so wise, so sagacious, so deep-sighted, as the arch traitor, should have placed confidence in one so fickle and infirm of purpose.

His knitted brow relaxed, the hardness of his eye relented, he cast the dagger from him.

The next moment, suffering the scarf to fall from her white and dazzling shoulders, the beautiful but bad enchantress flung herself upon his bosom, in the abandonment of her dishevelled beauty, winding her snowy arms about his neck, smothering his voice with kisses.

A moment more, and she was seated on his knee, with his left arm about her waist, drinking with eager and attentive ears, that suffered not a single detail to escape them, the fullest revelation of that atrocious plot, the days, the very hours of action, the numbers, names, and rank of the conspirators!

A woman's infamy rewarded the base villain's double treason! A woman's infamy saved Rome!

Two hours later, the crash and roar of the hurricane and earthquake cut short their guilty pleasures. Curius rushed into the streets headlong, almost deeming that the insurrection might have exploded prematurely, and found it—more than half frustrated.

Fulvia, while yet the thunder rolled, and the blue lightning flashed above her head, and the earth reeled beneath her footsteps, went forth, strong in the resolution of that Roman patriotism, which, nursed by the institutions of the age, and the pride of the haughty heart, stood with her, as it did with so many others, in lieu of any other principle, of any other virtue.

Closely veiled, unattended even by a single slave, that delicate luxurious sinner braved the wild fury of the elements; braved the tumultuous frenzy, and more tumultuous terror, of the disorganised and angry populace; braved the dark superstition, which crept upon her as she marked the awful portents of that night, and half persuaded her to the belief that there were Powers on high, who heeded the ways, punished the crimes of mortals.

And that strange sense grew on her more and more, though she resisted it, incredulous, when after a little while she sat side by side with the wise and virtuous Consul, and marked the calmness, almost divine, of his thoughtful benignant features, as he heard the full details of the awful crisis, heretofore but suspected, in which he stood, as if upon the verge of a scarce slumbering volcano.

What passed between that frail woman, and the wise orator, none ever fully knew. But they parted—on his side with words of encouragement and kindness—on her's with a sense of veneration approaching almost to religious awe.

And the next day, the usurer Alfenus received in full the debt, both principal and interest, which he had long despaired of touching.

But when the Great Man stood alone in his silent study, that strange and unexpected interview concluded, he turned his eyes upward, not looking, even once, toward the sublime bust of Jupiter which stood before him, serene in more than mortal grandeur; extended both his arms, and prayed in solemn accents—

"All thanks to thee, Omnipotent, Ubiquitous, Eternal, ONE! whom we, vain fools of fancy, adore in many forms, and under many names; invest with the low attributes of our own earthy nature; enshrine in mortal shapes, and human habitations! But thou, who wert, before the round world was, or the blue heaven o'erhung it; who wilt be, when those shall be no longer,—thou pardonest our madness, guidest our blindness, guardest our weakness. Thou, by the basest and most loathed instruments, dost work out thy great ends. All thanks, then, be to thee, by whatsoever name thou wouldest be addressed; to thee, whose dwelling is illimitable space, whose essence is in every thing that we behold, that moves, that is—to thee whom I hail, GOD! For thou hast given it to me to save my country. And whether I die now, by this assassin's knife, or live a little longer to behold the safety I establish, I have lived long enough, and am content to die!—Whether this death be, as philosophers have told us, a dreamless, senseless, and interminable trance; or, as I sometimes dream, a brief and passing slumber, from which we shall awaken into a purer, brighter, happier being—I have lived long enough! and when thou callest me, will answer to thy summons, glad and grateful! For Rome, at least, survives me, and shall perchance survive, 'till time itself is ended, the Queen of Universal Empire!"



CHAPTER XIV.

THE WARNINGS.

These late eclipses in the sun and moon Portend no good to us. KING LEAR.

The morning of the eighteenth of October, the day so eagerly looked forward to by the conspirators, and so much dreaded by the good citizens of the republic, had arrived. And now was seen, as it will oftentimes happen, that when great events, however carefully concealed, are on the point of coming to light, a sort of vague rumour, or indefinite anticipation, is found running through the whole mass of society—a rumour, traceable to no one source, possessing no authority, and deserving no credibility from its origin, or even its distinctness; yet in the main true and correct—an anticipation of I know not what terrible, unusual, and exaggerated issue, yet, after all, not very different from what is really about to happen.

Thus it was at this period; and—though it is quite certain, that on the preceding evening, at the convocation of the senate, no person except Cicero and Paullus, unconnected with the conspiracy, knew anything at all of the intended massacre and conflagration; though no one of the plotters had yet broken faith with his fellows; and though none of the leaders dared avow their schemes openly, even to the discontented populace, with whom they felt no sympathy, and from whom they expected no cordial or general cooperation—it is equally certain that for many days, and even months past, there had been a feverish and excited state of the public mind; an agitation and restlessness of the operative classes; an indistinct and vague alarm of the noble and wealthy orders; which had increased gradually until it was now at its height.

Among all these parties, this restlessness had taken the shape of anticipation, either dreadful or desirable, of some great change, of some strange novelty—though no one, either of the wishers or fearers, could explain what it was he wished or feared—to be developed at the consular comitia.

And amid this confusion, most congenial to his bold and scornful spirit, Catiline stalked, like the arch magician, to and fro, amid the wild and fantastic shapes of terror which he has himself evoked, marking the hopes of this one, as indications of an unknown, yet sure friend; and revelling in the terrors of that, as certain evidences of an enemy too weak and powerless to be formidable to his projects.

It is true, that a year before, previous to Cicero's elevation to the chief magistracy, and previous to the murder of Piso by his own adherents on his way to Spain, the designs of Catiline had been suspected dangerous; and, as such, had contributed to the election of his rival; his own faction succeeding only in carrying in Antonius, the second and least dreaded of their candidates.

Him Cicero, by rare management and much self-sacrifice, had contrived to bring over to the cause of the commonwealth; although he had so far kept his faith with Catiline, as to disclose none, if indeed he knew any of his infamous designs.

In consequence of this defeat, and this subsequent secession of one on whom they had, perhaps, prematurely reckoned, the conspirators, all but their indomitable and unwearied leader, had been for some time paralyzed. And this fact, joined to the extreme caution of their latter proceedings, had tended to throw a shade of doubt over the previous accusation, and to create a sense of carelessness and almost of disbelief in the minds of the majority, as to the real existence of any schemes at all against the commonwealth.

Under all these circumstances, it cannot be doubted, for a moment, that had Catiline and his friends entertained any real desire of ameliorating the condition of the masses, of extending the privileges, or improving the condition, of the discontented and suffering plebeians, they could have overturned the ancient fabric of Rome's world-conquering oligarchy.

But the truth is, they dreamed of nothing less, than of meddling at all with the condition of the people; on whom they looked merely as tools and instruments for the present, and sources of plunder and profit in the future.

They could not trust the plebeians, because they knew that the plebeians, in their turn, could not trust them.

The dreadful struggles of Marius, Cinna, and Sylla, had convinced those of all classes, who possessed any stake in the well being of the country; any estate or property, however humble, down even to the tools of daily labour, and the occupation of permanent stalls for daily traffic, that it was neither change, nor revolution, nor even larger liberty—much less proscription, civil strife, and fire-raising—but rest, but tranquillity, but peace, that they required.

It was not to the people, therefore, properly so called, but to the dissolute and ruined outcasts of the aristocracy, and to the lowest rabble, the homeless, idle, vicious, drunken poor, who having nothing to love, have necessarily all to gain, by havoc and rapine, that the conspirators looked for support.

The first class of these was won, bound by oaths, only less binding than their necessities and desperation, sure guaranties for their good faith.

The second—Catiline well knew that—needed no winning. The first clang of arms in the streets, the first blaze of incendiary flames, no fear but they would rise to rob, to ravish, and slay—ensuring that grand anarchy which he proposed to substitute for the existing state of things, and on which he hoped to build up his own tyrannous and blood-cemented empire.

So stood affairs on the evening of the seventeenth; and, although at times a suspicion—not a fear, for of that he was incapable—flitted across the mind of the traitor, that things were not going on as he could wish them; that the alienation of Paullus Arvina, and the absence of his injured daughter, must probably work together to the discomfiture of the conspiracy; still, as hour after hour passed away, and no discovery was made, he revelled in his anticipated triumph.

Of the interview between Paullus and Lucia, he was as yet unaware; and, with that singular inconsistency which is to be found in almost every mind, although he disbelieved, as a principle, in the existence of honor at all, he yet never doubted that young Arvina would hold himself bound strictly by the pledge of secrecy which he had reiterated, after the frustration of the murderous attempt against his life, in the cave of Egeria.

Nor did he err in his premises; for had not Arvina been convinced that new and more perilous schemes were on the point of being executed against himself, he would have remained silent as to the names of the traitors; however he might have deemed it his duty to reveal the meditated treason.

With his plans therefore all matured, his chief subordinates drilled thoroughly to the performance of their parts, his minions armed and ready, he doubted not in the least, as he gazed on the setting sun, that the next rising of the great luminary would look down on the conflagration of the suburbs, on the slaughter of his enemies, and the triumphant elevation of himself to the supreme command of the vast empire, for which he played so foully.

The morning came, the long desired sun arose, and all his plots were countermined, all his hopes of immediate action paralyzed, if not utterly destroyed.

The Senate, assembled on the previous evening at a moment's notice, had been taken by surprise so completely by the strange revelations made to them by their Consul, that not one of the advocates or friends of Catiline arose to say one syllable in his defence; and he himself, quick-witted, ready, daring as he was, and fearing neither man nor God, was for once thunderstricken and astonished.

The address of the Consul was short, practical, and to the point; and the danger he foretold to the order was so terrible, while the inconvenience of deferring the elections was so small, and its occurrence so frequent—a sudden tempest, the striking of the standard on the Janiculum, the interruption of a tribune, or the slightest informality in the augural rites sufficing to interrupt them—that little objection was made in any quarter, to the motion of Cicero, that the comitia should be delayed, until the matter could be thoroughly investigated. For he professed only as yet to possess a clue, which he promised hereafter to unravel to the end.

Catiline had, however, so far recovered from his consternation, that he had risen to address the house, when the first words he uttered were drowned by a strange and unearthly sound, like the rumbling of ten thousand chariots over a stony way, beginning, as it seemed, underneath their feet, and rising gradually until it died away over head in the murky air. Before there was time for any comment on this extraordinary sound, a tremulous motion crept through the marble pavements, increasing every moment, until the doors flew violently open, and the vast columns and thick walls of the stately temple reeled visibly in the dread earthquake.

Nor was this all, for as the portals opened, in the black skies, right opposite the entrance, there stood, glaring with red and lurid light, a bearded star or comet; which, to the terror-stricken eyes of the Fathers, seemed a portentous sword, brandished above the city.

The groans and shrieks of the multitude, rushed in with an appalling sound to increase their superstitious awe; and to complete the whole, a pale and ghastly messenger was ushered into the house, announcing that a bright lambent flame was sitting on the lance-heads of the Praetor's guard, which had been summoned to protect the Senate in its deliberations.

A fell sneer curled the lip of Catiline. He was not even superstitious. Self-vanity and confidence in his own powers, and long impunity in crime, had hardened him, had maddened him, almost to Atheism. Yet he dared not attack the sacred prejudices of the men, whom, but for that occurrence, he had yet hoped to win to their own undoing.

But, as he saw their blanched visages, and heard their mutterings of terror, he saw likewise that an impression was made on their minds, which no words of his could for the present counteract. And, with a sneering smile at fears which he knew not, and a smothered curse at the accident, as he termed it, which had foiled him, he sat down silent.

"The Gods have spoken!" exclaimed Cicero, flinging his arms abroad majestically. "The guilty are struck dumb! The Gods have spoken aloud their sympathy for Rome's peril; and will ye, ye its chosen sons, whose all of happiness and life lie in its sanctity and safety, will ye, I say, love your own country, your own mother, less than the Gods love her?"

The moment was decisive, the appeal irresistible. By acclamation the vote was carried; no need to debate or to divide the House—'that the elections be deferred until the eleventh day before the Calends, and that the Senate meet again to-morrow, shortly after sunrise, to deliberate what shall be done to protect the Republic?'

Morning came, dark indeed, and lurid, and more like the close, than the opening of day. Morning came, but it brought no change with it; for not a head in Rome had lain that night upon a pillow, save those of the unburied dead, or the bedridden. Young men and aged, sick and sound, masters and slaves, had wooed no sleep during the hours of darkness, so terribly, so constantly was it illuminated by the broad flashes of blue lightning, and the strange meteors, which rushed almost incessantly athwart the sky. The winds too had been all unchained in their fury, and went howling like tormented spirits, over the terrified and trembling city.

It was said too, that the shades of the dead had arisen, and were seen mingling in the streets with the living, scarcely more livid than the half-dead spectators of portents so ominous. No rumour so absurd or fanatical, but it found on that night, implicit credence. Some shouted in the streets and open places, that the patricians and the knights were arming their adherents for a promiscuous massacre of the people. Some, that the gladiators had broken loose, and slain thousands of citizens already! Some, that there was a Gallic tumult, and that the enemy would be at the gates in the morning! Some that the Gods had judged Rome to destruction!

And so they raved, and roared, and sometimes fought; and would have rioted tremendously; for many of the commoner conspirators were abroad, ready to take advantage of any casual incident to breed an affray; but that a strong force of civil magistrates patrolled the streets with armed attendants; and that, during the night several cohorts were brought in, from the armies of Quintus Marcius Rex, and Quintus Metellus Creticus, with all their armor and war weapons, in heavy marching order; and occupied the Capitol, the Palatine, and the Janiculum, and all the other prominent and commanding points of the city, with an array that set opposition at defiance.

So great, however, were the apprehensions of many of the nobles, that Rome was on the eve of a servile insurrection, that many of them armed their freedmen, and imprisoned all their slaves; while others, the more generous and milder, who thought they could rely on the attachment of their people, weaponed their slaves themselves, and fortified their isolated dwellings against the anticipated onslaught.

Thus passed that terrible and tempestuous night; the roar of the elements, unchained as they were, and at their work of havoc, not sufficing to drown the dissonant and angry cries of men, the clash of weapons, and the shrill clamor of women; which made Rome more resemble the Pandemonium than the metropolis of the world's most civilized and mightiest nation.

But now morning had come at length; and gradually, as the storm ceased, and the heavens resumed their natural appearance, the terrors and the fury of the multitude subsided; and, partly satisfied by the constant and well-timed proclamations of the magistrates, partly convinced that for the moment there was no hope of successful outrage, and yet more wearied out with their own turbulent vehemence, whether of fear or anger, the crowd began to retire to their houses, and the streets were left empty and silent.

As the day dawned, there was no banner hoisted on the Janiculum, although its turrets might be seen bristling with the short massive javelins of the legions, and gleaming with the tawny light that flashed from their brazen casques and corslets.

There was no augural tent pitched on the hills without the city walls, wherefrom to take the auspices.

And above all, there were no loud and stirring calls of the brazen trumpets of the centuries, to summon forth the civic army of the Roman people to the Campus, there to elect their rulers for the ensuing year.

It was apparent therefore to all men, that the elections would not be held that day, though none knew clearly wherefore they had been deferred.

While the whole city was loud with turbulent confusion—for, as morning broke, and it was known that the comitia were postponed, the agitation of terror succeeded to that of insubordination—Hortensia and her daughter sat together, pale, anxious, and heartsick, yet firm and free from all unworthy evidences of dismay.

During the past night, which had been to both a sleepless one, they had sate listening, lone and weak women, to the roar of tumultuous streets, and expecting at every moment they knew not what of violence and outrage.

Paullus Arvina had come in once to reassure them: and informed them that the vigilance of the Consul had been crowned with success, and that the danger of a conflict in the streets was subsiding every moment.

Still, the care which he bestowed on examining the fastenings of the doors, and such windows as looked into the streets, the earnestness with which he inculcated watchful heed to the armed slaves of the household, and the positive manner in which he insisted on leaving Thrasea and a dozen of his own trustiest men to assist Hortensia's people, did more to obliterate the hopes his own words would otherwise have excited, than the words themselves to excite them.

Nor was it, indeed, to be wondered that Hortensia should be liable, above other women, not to base terror,—for of that from her high character she was incapable—but to a settled apprehension and distrust of the Roman Populace.

It was now four-and-twenty years since the city had been disturbed by plebeian violence or aristocratic vengeance. Twenty-four years ago, the avenging sword of Sylla had purged the state of its bloodthirsty demagogues, and their brute followers; twenty-four years ago his powerful hand had reestablished Rome's ancient constitution, full of checks and balances, which secured equal rights to every Roman citizen; which secured all equality, in short to all men, save that which no human laws can give, equality of social rank, and equality of wealth.

The years, however, which had gone before that restoration, the dreadful massacres and yet more dreadful proscriptions of Cinna and Marius, had left indelible and sanguinary traces on the ancestral tree of many a noble house; and on none deeper than on that of Hortensia's family.

Her brother, Caius Julius, an orator second to none in those days, had been murdered by the followers of Marius, almost before his sister's eyes, with circumstances of appalling cruelty. Her house had been forced open by the infuriate rabble, her husband hewn down with unnumbered wounds, on his own hearth-stone, and her first born child tossed upon the revolutionary pike heads.

Her husband indeed recovered, almost miraculously, from his wounds, and lived to see retribution fall upon the guilty partizans of Marius; but he was never well again, and after languishing for years, died at last of the wounds he received on that bloody day.

Good cause, then, had Hortensia to tremble at the tender mercies of the people.

Nor, though they struck the minds of these high-born ladies with less perplexity and awe than the vulgar souls without, were the portents and horrors of the heaven, without due effect. No mind in those days, however clear and enlightened, but held some lingering belief that such things were ominous of coming wrath, and sent by the Gods to inform their faithful worshippers.

It was moreover fresh in her memory, how two years before, during the consulship of Cotta and Torquatus, in a like terrible night-storm, the fire from heaven had stricken down the highest turrets of the capitol, melted the brazen tables of the law, and scathed the gilded effigy of Romulus and Remus, sucking their shaggy foster-mother, which stood on the Capitoline.

The augurs in those days, collected from Etruria and all parts of Italy, after long consultation, had proclaimed that unless the Gods should be appeased duly, the end of Rome and her empire was at hand.

And now—what though for ten whole days consecutive the sacred games went on; what though nothing had been omitted whereby to avert the immortal indignation—did not this heaven-born tempest prove that the wrath was not soothed, that the decree yet stood firm?

In such deep thoughts, and in the strong excitement of such expectation, Hortensia and her daughter had passed that awful night; not without high instructions from the elder lady, grave and yet stirring narratives of the great men of old—how they strove fiercely, energetically, while strife could avail anything; and how, when the last hope was over, they folded their hands in stern and awful resignation, and met their fate unblenching, and with but one care—that the decorum of their deaths should not prove unworthy the dignity of their past lives.

Not without generous and noble resolutions on the part of both, that they too would not be found wanting.

But there was nothing humble, nothing soft, in their stern and proud submission to the inevitable necessity. Nothing of love toward the hand which dealt the blow—nothing of confidence in supernal justice, much less in supernal mercy! Nothing of that sweet hope, that undying trust, that consciousness of self-unworthiness, that full conviction of a glorious future, which renders so beautiful and happy the submission of a dying Christian.

No! there were none of these things; for to the wisest and best of the ancients, the foreshadowings of the soul's immortality were dim, faint, and uncertain. The legends of their mythology held up such pictures of the sensuality and vice of those whom they called Gods, that it was utterly impossible for any sound understanding to accept them. And deep thinkers were consequently driven into pure Deism, coupled too often with the Epicurean creed, that the Great Spirit was too grand and too sublime to trouble himself with the brief doings of mortality.

The whole scope of the Roman's hope and ambition, then, was limited to this world; or, if there was a longing for anything beyond the term of mortality, it was for a name, a memory, an immortality of good report.

And pride, which the christian, better instructed, knows to be the germ and root of all sin, was to the Roman, the sole spring of honourable action, the sole source of virtue.

Now, with the morning, quiet was restored both to the angry skies, and to the restless city.

Worn out with anxiety, and watching, sleep fell upon the eyes of Julia, as she sat half recumbent in a large softly-cushioned chair of Etruscan bronze. Her fair head fell back on the crimson pillow, with all its wealth of auburn ringlets flowing dishevelled; and that soft still shadow, which is yet, in its beautiful serenity, half terrible, so nearly is it allied to the shadow of that sleep from which there comes no waking, fell over her pale features.

The mother gazed on her for a moment, with more gentleness in her eye, and a milder smile on her face, than her indomitable pride often permitted her to manifest.

"She sleeps"—she said, looking at her wistfully—"she sleeps! Aye! the young sleep easily, even in their affliction. They sleep, and forget their sorrows, and awaken, either to fresh woes, as soon to be obliterated, or to vain joys, yet briefer, and more fleeting. Thoughtlessness to the young—anguish to the old—such is mortality! And what beyond?—aye, what?—what that we should so toil, so suffer, to be virtuous? Is it a dream, all a dream—this futurity? I fear so"—and, with the words, she lapsed into a fit of solemn meditation, and stood for many minutes silent, and absorbed. Then a keen light came into her dark eyes, a flash of animation coloured her pale cheeks, she stretched her arms aloft, and in a clear sonorous voice—"No! no!" she said, "Honour—honour—immortal honour; thou, at least, art no dream—thou art worth dying, suffering, aye! worth living to obtain! For what is life but the deeper sorrow, to the more virtuous and the nobler?"

A few minutes longer she stood gazing on her daughter's beautiful face, until the sound of voices louder than usual, and a slight bustle, in the peristyle, attracted her attention. Then, after throwing a pallium, or shawl, of richly embroidered woollen stuff over the fair form of the sleeper, she opened the door leading to the garden colonnade, and left the room silently.

Scarcely had Hortensia disappeared, before the opposite door, by which the saloon communicated with the atrium, was opened, and a slave entered, bearing a small folded note, secured by a waxen seal, on a silver plate.

He approached Julia's chair, apparently in some hesitation, as if he felt that it was his duty, and was yet half afraid to awaken her. At length, however, he made up his mind, and addressed a word or two to her, which were sufficiently distinct to arouse her—for she started up and gazed wildly about her—but left no clear impression of their meaning on her mind.

This, however, the man did not appear to notice; at all events, he did not wait to observe the effect of his communication, but quitted the room hastily, and in considerable trepidation, leaving the note on the table.

Julia was sleeping very heavily, at the moment when she was so startled from her slumber; and, as is not unfrequently the case, a sort of bewilderment and nervous agitation fell upon her, as she recovered her senses. Perhaps she had been dreaming, and the imaginary events of her dream had blended themselves with the real occurrence which awakened her. But for a minute or two, though she saw the note, and the person who laid it on the table, she could neither bring it to her mind who that person was, nor divest herself of the impression that there was something both dangerous and supernatural in what had passed.

In a little while this feeling passed away, and, though still nervous and trembling, the young girl smiled at her own alarm, as she took up the billet, which was directed to herself in a delicate feminine hand, with the usual form of superscription—

"To Julia Serena, health"—

although the writer's name was omitted.

She gazed at it for a moment, wondering from whom it could come; since she had no habitual correspondent, and the hand-writing, though beautiful, was strange to her. She opened it, and read, her wonder and agitation increasing with every line—

"You love Paullus Arvina," thus it ran, "and are loved by him. He is worthy all your affection. Are you worthy of him, I know not. I love him also, but alas! less happy, am not loved again, nor hope to be, nor indeed deserve it! They tell me you are beautiful; I have seen you, and yet I know not—they told me once that I too was beautiful, and yet I know not! I know this only, that I am desperate, and base, and miserable! Yet fear me not, nor mistake me. I love Paullus, yet would not have him mine, now; no! not to be happy—as to be his would render me. Yet had it not been for you, I might have been virtuous, honourable, happy, his—for winning him from me, you won from me hope; and with hope virtue; and with virtue honour! Ought I not then to hate you, Julia? Perchance I ought—to do so were at least Roman—and hating to avenge! Perchance, if I hoped, I should. But hoping nothing, I hate nothing, dread nothing, and wish nothing.—Yea! by the Gods! I wish to know Paullus happy—yea! more, I wish, even at cost of my own misery, to make him happy. Shall I do so, by making him yours, Julia? I think so, for be sure—be sure, he loves you. Else had he yielded to my blandishments, to my passion, to my beauty! for I am—by the Gods! I am, though he sees it not, as beautiful as thou. And I am proud likewise—or was proud once—for misery has conquered pride in me; or what is weaker yet, and baser—love!"

"I think you will make him happy. You can if you will. Do so, by all the Gods! I adjure you do so; and if you do not, tremble!—tremble, I say—for think, if I sacrifice myself to win bliss for him—think, girl, how gladly, how triumphantly, I would destroy a rival, who should fail to do that, for which alone I spare her.

"Spare her! nay, but much more; for I can save her—can and will.

"Strange things will come to pass ere long, and terrible; and to no one so terrible as to you.

"There is a man in Rome, so powerful, that the Gods, only, if there be Gods, can compare with him—so haughty in ambition, that stood he second in Olympus, he would risk all things to be first—so cruel, that the dug-drawn Hyrcanian tigress were pitiful compared to him—so reckless of all things divine or human, that, did his own mother stand between him and his vengeance, he would strike through her heart to gain it.

"This man hath Paullus made his foe—he hath crossed his path; he hath foiled him!

"He never spared man in his wrath, or woman in his passion.

"He hateth Paullus!

"He hath looked on Julia!

"Think, then, when lust and hate spur such a man together, what will restrain him.

"Now mark me, and you shall yet be safe. All means will be essayed to win you, for he would torture Paul by making him his slave, ere he make you his victim.

"And Paul may waver. He hath wavered once. Chance only, and I, rescued him! I can do no more, for Rome must know me no longer! See, then, that thou hold him constant in the right—firm for his country! So may he defy secret spite, as he hath defied open violence.

"Now for thyself—beware of women! Go not forth alone ever, or without armed followers! Sleep not, but with a woman in thy chamber, and a watcher at thy door! Eat not, nor drink, any thing abroad; nor at home, save that which is prepared by known hands, and tasted by the slave who serves it!

"Be true to Paullus, and yourself, and you have a friend ever watchful. So fear not, nor despond!

"Fail me—and, failing truth and honour, failing to make Paullus happy, you do fail me! Fail me, and nothing, in the world's history or fable, shall match the greatness of my vengeance—of your anguish!

"Fail me! and yours shall be, for ages, the name that men shall quote, when they would tell of untold misery, of utter shame, and desolation, and despair.

"Farewell."

The letter dropped from her hand; she sat aghast and speechless, terrified beyond measure, and yet unable to determine, or divine, even, to what its dark warnings and darker denunciations pointed.

Just at this instant, as between terror and amazement she was on the verge of fainting, a clanging step was heard without; the crimson draperies that covered the door, were put aside; and, clad in glittering armour, Paullus Arvina stood before her.

She started up, with a strange haggard smile flashing across her pallid face, staggered a step or two to meet him, and sank in an agony of tears upon his bosom.



CHAPTER XV.

THE CONFESSION.

To err is human; to forgive—divine!

The astonishment of Paullus, at this strange burst of feeling on the part of one usually so calm, so self-controlled, and seemingly so unimpassioned as that sweet lady, may be more easily imagined than described.

That she, whose maidenly reserve had never heretofore permitted the slightest, the most innocent freedom of her accepted lover, should cast herself thus into his arms, should rest her head on his bosom, was in itself enough to surprise him; but when to this were added the violent convulsive sobs, which shook her whole frame, the flood of tears, which streamed from her eyes, the wild and disjointed words, which fell from her pale lips, he was struck dumb with something not far removed from terror.

That it was fear, which shook her thus, he could not credit; for during all the fearful sounds and rumours of the past night, she had been as firm as a hero.

Yet he knew not, dared not think, to what other cause he might attribute it.

He spoke to her soothingly, tenderly, but his voice faltered as he spoke.

"Nay! nay! be not alarmed, dear girl!" he said. "The tumults are all, long since, quelled; the danger has all vanished with the darkness, and the storm. Cheer up, my own, sweet, Julia."

And, as he spoke, he passed his arm about her graceful form, and drew her closer to his bosom.

But whether it was this movement, or something in his words that aroused her, she started from his arms in a moment; and stood erect and rigid, pale still and agitated, but no longer trembling. She raised her hands to her brow, and put away the profusion of rich auburn ringlets, which had fallen down dishevelled over her eyes, and gazed at him stedfastly, strangely, as she had never gazed at him before.

"Your own Julia!" she said, in slow accents, scarce louder than a whisper, but full of strong and painful meaning. "Oh! I adjure you, by the Gods! by all you love! or hope! Are you false to me, Paullus!"

"False! Julia!" he exclaimed, starting, and the blood rushing consciously to his bold face.

"I am answered!" she said, collecting herself, with a desperate effort. "It is well—the Gods guard you!—Leave me!"

"Leave you!" he cried. "By earth, and sea, and heaven, and all that they contain! I know not what you mean."

"Know you this writing, then?" she asked him, reaching the letter from the table, and holding it before his eyes.

"No more than I know, what so strangely moves you," he answered; and she saw, by the unaffected astonishment which pervaded all his features, that he spoke truly.

"Read it," she said, somewhat more composed; "and tell me, who is the writer of it. You must know."

Before he had read six lines, it was clear to him that it must come from Lucia, and no words can describe the agony, the eager intense torture of anticipation, with which he perused it, devouring every word, and at every word expecting to find the damning record of his falsehood inscribed in characters, that should admit of no denial.

Before, however, he had reached the middle of the letter, he felt that he could bear the scrutiny of that pale girl no longer; and, lowering the strip of vellum on which it was written, met her eye firmly.

For he was resolute for once to do the true and honest thing, let what might come of it. The weaker points of his character were vanishing rapidly, and the last few eventful days had done the work of years upon his mind; and all that work was salutary.

She, too, read something in the expression of his eye, which led her to hope—what, she knew not; and she smiled faintly, as she said—

"You know the writer, Paullus?"

"Julia, I know her," he replied steadily.

"Her!" she said, laying an emphasis on the word, but how affected by it Arvina could not judge. "It is then a woman?"

"A very young, a very beautiful, a very wretched, girl!" he answered.

"And you love her?" she said, with an effort at firmness, which itself proved the violence of her emotion.

"By your life! Julia, I do not!" he replied, with an energy, that spoke well for the truth of his asseveration.

"Nor ever loved her?"

"Nor ever—loved her, Julia." But he hesitated a little as he said it; and laid a peculiar stress on the word loved, which did not escape the anxious ears of the lovely being, whose whole soul hung suspended on his speech.

"Why not?" she asked, after a moment's pause, "if she be so very young, and so very beautiful?"

"I might answer, because I never saw her, 'till I loved one more beautiful. But—"

"But you will not!" she interrupted him vehemently. "Oh! if you love me? if you do love me, Paullus, do not answer me so."

"And wherefore not?" he asked her, half smiling, though little mirthful in his heart, at her impetuosity.

"Because if you descend to flatter," answered the fair girl quietly, "I shall be sure that you intended to deceive me."

"It would be strictly true, notwithstanding. For though, as she says, we met years ago, she was but a child then; and, since that time, I never saw her until four or five days ago—"

"And since then, how often?" Julia again interrupted him; for, in the intensity of her anxiety, she could not wait the full answer to one question, before another suggested itself to her mind, and found voice at the instant.

"Once, Julia."

"Only once?"

"Once only, by the Gods!"

"You have not told me wherefore it was, that you never loved her!"

"Have I not told you, that I never saw her till a few days, a few hours, I might have said, ago? and does not that tell you wherefore, Julia?"

"But there is something more. There is another reason. Oh! tell me, I adjure you, by all that you hold dearest, tell me!"

"There is another reason. I told you that she was very young, and very beautiful; but, Julia, she was also very guilty!"

"Guilty!" exclaimed the fair girl, blushing fiery red, "guilty of loving you! Oh! Paullus! Paullus!" and between shame, and anger, and the repulsive shock that every pure and feminine mind experiences in hearing of a sister's frailty, she buried her face in her hands, and wept aloud.

"Guilty, before I ever heard her name, or knew that she existed," answered the young man, fervently; but his heart smote him somewhat, as he spoke; though what he said was but the simple truth, and it was well for him perhaps at the present moment, that Julia did not see his face. For there was much perturbation in it, and it is like that she would have judged even more hardly of that perturbation than it entirely deserved. He paused for a moment, and then added,

"But if the guilt of woman can be excusable at all, she can plead more in extenuation of her errors, than any of her sex that ever fell from virtue. She is most penitent; and might have been, but for fate and the atrocious wickedness of others, a most noble being—as she is now a most glorious ruin."

There was another pause, during which neither spoke or moved, Julia overpowered by the excess of her feelings—he by the painful consciousness of wrong; the difficulty of explaining, of extenuating his own conduct; and above all, the dread of losing the enchanting creature, whom he had never loved so deeply or so truly as he did now, when he had well nigh forfeited all claim to her affection.