University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
THE OATH.

Julius Cæsar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am sworn, Catiline!”

“See then that thou be not forsworn. Little thou

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

“I am, at least, no traitor!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Cicero's, Catiline!”

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

“He knows it.”

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

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

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

“I hear, Catiline.”

“And wilt obey?”

“And will obey.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arvina and the Consul speedily reached the booth.

“Volero! Volero!”

But there came forth no answer.

“Volero! what ho! Volero!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No one else?”

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

“Hath no one else seen it?”

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

“Catiline!”

“Ay! Consul?”

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

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

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