University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE AMBUSH.

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

It was already near the fourth hour of the Roman night,
or about a quarter past eight of our time, when Paullus issued
from the Capuan gate, in order to keep his appointment
with the conspirator; and bold as he was, and fearless
under ordinary circumstances, it would be useless to deny
that his heart beat fast and anxiously under his steel cuirass,
as he strode rapidly along the Appian way to the place of
meeting.

The sun had long since set, and the moon, which was in
her last quarter, had not as yet risen; so that, although the
skies were perfectly clear and cloudless, there was but
little light by which to direct his foot-steps toward the
valley of the Muses, had he not been already familiar with
the way.

Stepping out rapidly, for he was fearful now of being
too late at the place appointed, he soon passed the two
branches of the beautiful and sparkling Almo, wherein the
priests of Cybele were wont to lave the statue of their
goddess, amid the din of brazen instruments and sacred
song; and a little further on, arrived at the cross-road
where the way to Ardea, in the Latin country, branched
off to the right hand from the great Appian turnpike.

At this point there was a small temple sacred to Bacchus,
and a little grove of elms and plane trees overrun
with vines, on which the ripe clusters consecrated to the
God were hanging yet, though the season of the vintage
had elapsed, safe from the hand of passenger or truant
school-boy.

Turning around the angle of this building, Arvina entered
a dim lane, overshadowed by the tall trees of the grove,
which wound over two or three little hillocks, and then
sweeping downward to the three kindred streamlets, which
form the sources of the Almo, followed their right bank up
the valley of the Muses.

Had the mind of Arvina been less agitated than it was
by dark and ominous forebodings, that walk had been a
pleasant one, in the calm and breezeless evening. The
stars were shining by thousands in the deep azure sky;
the constant chirrup of the shrill-voiced cicala, not mute as
yet, although his days of tuneful life were well nigh ended,
rose cheerfully above the rippling murmurs of the waters,
and the mysterious rustling of the herbage rejoicing to
drink up the copious dew; and heard by fits and starts
from the thick clumps of arbutus on the hills, or the thorn
bushes on the water's brink, the liquid notes of the nightingale
gushed out, charming the ear of darkness.

For the first half mile of his walk, the young patrician
met several persons on the way—two or three pairs of lovers,
as they seemed, of the lower orders, strolling affectionately
homeward; a party of rural slaves returning from
their labours on some suburban farm, to their master's
house; and more than one loaded chariot; but beyond this
all was lonely and silent, with the exception of the stream,
the insects, and the vocal night-bird.

There was no sound or sight that would seem to indicate
the vicinity of any human being, as Arvina, passing
the mouth of a small gorge or hollow scooped out of the
bosom of a soft green hill, paused at the arch of a low but
richly ornamented grotto, hollowed out of the face of the
rock, and supported by a vault of reticulated brick-work,
decorated elegantly with reliefs of marble and rich stucco.
The soft green mosses and dark tendrils of the waving ivy,
which drooped down from the rock and curtained well
nigh half the opening, rendered the grotto very dark within.

And it was a moment or two before Paullus discovered
that he was alone in that secluded place, or in the company
only of the old marble god, who, reclining on a couch of the
same material at the farther end of the cave, poured forth
his bright waters from an inverted jar, into the clear cool
basin which filled the centre of the place.

He was surprised not a little at finding himself the
first at the place of meeting, for he was conscious that
he was behind his time; and had, indeed, come somewhat
late on purpose, with a view of taking his stand as if naturally
during the interview, between the conspirator and
the cave mouth.

It was not, however, altogether a matter of regret to him,
that he had gained a little time, for the folds of his toga
required some adjustment, in order to enable him to get
readily at the hilt of his sword, and the mouth-piece of his
hunting-horn, which he carried beneath his gown. And he
applied himself to that purpose immediately, congratulating
himself, as he did so, on the failure of his first project,
and thinking how much better it would be for him to stand
as far as possible from the entrance, so as to avoid even
the few rays of dim star-light, which crept in through the
tangled ivy.

This was soon done; and in accordance with his afterthought,
he sat down on a projecting angle of the statue's
marble couch, in the inmost corner of the vault, facing the
door, and having the pool of the fountain interposed between
that and himself.

For a few moments he sat thinking anxiously about the
interview, which he believed, not without cause, was likely
to prove embarrassing, at least, if not perilous. But,
when he confessed to himself, which he was very soon
compelled to do, that he could shape nothing of his own
course, until he should hear what were the plans in which
Catiline desired his coöperation; and when time fled and
the man came not, his mind began to wander, and to think
about twenty gay and pleasant subjects entirely disconnected
with the purpose for which he had come thither.
Then he fell gradually into a sort of waking dream, or vision,
as it were, of wandering fancies, made up partly of the
sounds which he actually heard with his outward ears,
though his mind took but little note of them, and partly of

the occurrences in which he had been mixed up, and the
persons with whom he had been brought into contact within
the last two or three days. The gory visage of the murdered
slave, the sweet and calm expression of his own
Julia, the truculent eyes and sneering lip of Catiline, and
the veiled glance and voluptuous smile of his too seductive
daughter, whirled still before him in a strange
sort of human phantasmagoria, with the deep searching
look of the consul orator, the wild glare of the slaughtered
Volero, and the stern face, grand and proud in his last
agony, of the dying Varus.

In this mood he had forgotten altogether where he was,
and on what purpose, when a deep voice aroused him with
a start, and though he had neither heard his footstep, nor
seen him enter, Catiline stood beside his elbow.

“What ho!” he exclaimed, “Paullus, have I detained
you long in this dark solitude.”

“Nay, I know not how long,” replied the other, “for I
had fallen into strange thoughts, and forgotten altogether
the lapse of time; but here have I been since the fourth
hour.”

“And it is now already past the fifth,” said Cataline, “but
come, we must make up for the loss of time. Some friends
of mine are waiting for us, to whom I wish to introduce you,
that you may become altogether one of us, and take the
oaths of fidelity. Give me the dagger now, and let us be
going on our way.”

“I have it not with me, Catiline.”

“Have it not with you! Wherefore not? wherefore
not, I say, boy?” cried the conspirator, very savagely. “By
all the furies in deep hell, you were better not dally with
me.”

“Because it is no longer in my possession; and therefore
I could not bring it with me,” he replied firraly, for the
threats of the other only inflamed his pride, and so increased
his natural courage.

“By the Gods, you brave me, then!” exclaimed Catiline;
“fool! fool! beware how you tamper with your fate. Speak
instantly, speak out: to whom have you dared give it?”

“There was no daring in the matter, Catiline,” he answered
steadily, keeping an eye on the arch-traitor's movements;
“before I knew that it was yours, I sent it, as I had

promised, to Cicero, with word that Volero could tell him
who was the owner of it.”

“Ha, didst thou so?” said the other, mastering instantly
his fury, in his desire to make himself fully acquainted with
all that had passed. “When was all this? has he seen
Volero, and learned the secret of him, then?”

“I sent it, Catiline, within an hour of the time I left the
Campus yesterday.”

“Before coming to my house to dinner?”

“Before going to thy house to dinner, Sergius.”

“Before seducing Lucia Orestilla?” again sneered the
desperate villain.

“Before yielding,” answered the young man, who was
now growing angry, for his temper was not of the meekest,
“to her irresistible seduction.”

“Ha! yielding—well! we will speak of that hereafter.
Hath the consul seen Volero?”

“He hath seen him dead; and how dead, Catiline best
knoweth.”

“It was, then, thou, whom I saw in the feeble lamplight
with the accursed wretch that crosses my path everywhere,
the dastard, drivelling dotard of Arpinum; thou that despite
thine oath, didst lead him to detect the man, thou hadst
sworn to obey, and follow! Thou! it is thou, then, that houndest
mine enemies upon my track! By the great Gods, I
know not whether most to marvel at the sublime, unrivalled
folly, which could lead thee to fancy, that thou, a mere boy
and tyro, couldst hoodwink eyes like mine; or at the daring
which could prompt thee to rush headlong on thine own ruin
in betraying me! Boy, thou hast but one course left; to
join us heart and hand; to go and renew thine oath in such
fashion as even thou, premeditated perjurer, wilt not presume
to break, and then to seal thy faith by the blood”—

“Of whom?”

“Of this new man; this pedant consul of Arpinum.”

“Aye!” exclaimed Paullus, as if half tempted to accede
to his proposal; “and if I do so, what shall I gain thereby?”

“Lucia, I might say,” answered Catiline, “but—seeing
that possession damps something at all times the fierceness
of pursuit—what if I should reply, the second place in
Rome?”

“In Rome?”

“When we have beaten down the proud patricians to
our feet, and raised the conquering ensign of democratic
sway upon the ramparts of the capitol; when Rome and
all that she contains of bright and beautiful, shall be our
heritage and spoil; the second place, I say, in regenerated
Rome, linked, too, to everlasting glory.”

“And the first place?”

`By Mars the great avenger! dost soar so high a pitch
already? ho! boy, the first is mine, by right, as by daring.
How say you? are you mine?”

“If I say no!”

“Thou diest on the instant.”

“I think not,” replied Arvina quietly, “and I do answer
No.”

“Then perish, fool, in thy folly.”

And leaping forward he dealt him a blow with a long
two-edged dagger, which he had held in his hand naked,
during the whole discussion, in readiness for the moment
he anticipated; and at the same instant uttered a loud clear
whistle.

To his astonishment the blade glanced off the breast of
the young man, and his arm was stunned nearly to the
shoulder by the unexpected resistance of the stout corslet.
The whistle was answered, however, the very moment
it was uttered; and just as he saw Paullus spring to the
farther side of the cavern, and set his back against the
wall, unsheathing a heavy broadsword of the short Roman
fashion, three stout men entered the mouth of the cave,
heavily armed with weapons of offence, although they wore
no defensive armor.

“Give me a sword,” shouted the fierce conspirator, furious
at being foiled, and perceiving that his whole enterprise
depended on the young man's destruction. “He is
armed under his gown with a breast-plate! Give me a sword,
and then set on him all at once. So that will do, now, on.”

“Hold, Sergius Catiline,” exclaimed Arvina, “hold, or by
all the Gods you will repent it. If you have three men at
your back I have full five times three within call.”

“Call them, then!” answered the other, making at him,
“call them! think you again to fool me? Ho, Geta and
Arminius, get round the fountain and set on him! make
haste I say—kill—kill.”

And with the word he rushed at him, aiming a fierce
blow at his head, while the others a moment afterward
charged on him from the other side.

But during the brief parley Arvina had disengaged the
folds of his gown from his right shoulder, and wrapped it
closely about his left arm, and when Catiline rushed in he
parried the blow with his sword, and raising the little horn
he carried, to his lips, blew a long piercing call, which was
answered by a loud shout close at hand, and by the rush of
many feet without the grotto.

Catiline was himself astonished at the unexpected aid,
for he had taken the words of the young patrician for
a mere boast. But his men were alarmed and fell back
in confusion, while Paul, profiting by their hesitation,
sprang with a quick active bound across the basin of the
fountain, and gained the cavern's mouth just as his stout
freedman Thrasea showed himself in the entrance with a
close casque and cuirass of bronze, and a boar spear in
his hand, the heads and weapons of several other able-bodied
men appearing close behind.

At the head of these Arvina placed himself instantly,
having his late assailants hemmed in by a force, against
which they now could not reasonably hope to struggle.

But Paullus showed no disposition to take undue advantage
of his superiority, for he said in a calm steady
voice, “I leave you now, my friend; and it will not be
my fault, if aught that has passed here, is remembered
any farther. None here have seen you, or know who
you are; and you may rest assured that for her sake and
mine own honor, if I join not your plans, I will not betray
you, or reveal your counsels. To that I am sworn, and come
what may, my oath shall not be broken.”

“Tush,” cried the other, maddened by disappointment,
and filled with desperate apprehensions, “men trust not
avowed traitors. Upon them, I say, you dogs. Let there be
forty of them, but four can stand abreast in the entrance,
and we can front them, four as good as they.

And he again dashed at Arvina, without waiting to see
if his gladiators meant to second his attack; but they hung
back, reluctant to fight against such odds; for, though
brave men, and accustomed to risk their lives, without
quarrel or excitement, for the gratification of the brute populace

of Rome, they had come to the cave of Egeria, prepared
for assassination, not for battle; and their antagonists
were superior to them as much in accoutrement and arms—
for their bronze head-pieces were seen distinctly glimmering
in the rays of the rising moon—as in numbers.

The blades of the leaders clashed together, and several
quick blows and parries had been interchanged, during
which Thrasea, had he not been restrained by his young
master's orders, might easily have stabbed the conspirator
with his boar-spear. But he held back at first, waiting
a fresh command, until seeing that none came, and that the
unknown opponent was pressing his lord hard; while
the gladiators, apparently encouraged by his apathy,
were beginning to handle their weapons, he shifted his
spear in his hands, and stepping back a pace, so as to
give full scope to a sweeping blow, he flourished the butt,
which was garnished with a heavy ball of metal, round his
head in a figure of eight, and brought it down so heavily
on the felt skull-cap of the conspirator, that his teeth jarred
audibly together, a quick flash sprang across his eyes, and
he fell, stunned and senseless, at the feet of his intended
victim.

“Hold, Thrasea, hold,” cried Paullus, “by the Gods! you
have slain him.”

“No, I have not. No! no! his head is too hard for that,”
answered the freedman; “I felt my staff rebound from the
bone, which it would not have done, had the skull been fractured.
No! he is not dead, though he deserved to die very
richly.”

“I am glad of it,” replied Paullus, “I would not have him
killed, for many reasons. Now, hark ye, ye scoundrels
and gallows-birds! most justly are your lives forfeit, whether
it seem good to me to take them here this moment, or
to drag you away, and hand you over to the lictors of the
city-prætor, as common robbers and assassins.”

“That you cannot do, whilst we live, most noble,” answered
the boldest of the gladiators, sullenly; “and you
cannot, I think, take our lives, without leaving some of
your own on our swords' points.”

“Brave me not,” cried the young man, sternly, “lest you
drive me to do that I would not. Your lives, I say, are forfeit;
but, seeing that I love not bloodshed, I leave you, for

this time, unpunished. Take up the master whom you
serve, and bear him home; and, when he shall be able to receive
it, tell him Paullus Arvina pardons his madness,
pities his fears, and betrays no man's trust—least of all
his. For the rest, let him choose between enmity and
friendship. I care not which it be. I can defend my own
life, and assail none. Beware how you follow us. If you
do, by all the Gods! you die. See, he begins to stir.
Come, Thrasea, call off your men; we will go, ere he come
to his senses, lest worse shall befal.”

And with the words he turned his back contemptuously
on the crest-fallen gladiators, and strode haughtily across
the threshold, leaving the fierce conspirator, as he was beginning
to recover his scattered senses, to the keen agony
of conscious villainy frustrated, and the stings of defeated
pride and disappointed malice.

The night was well advanced, when he reached his own
house, having met no interruption on the way, proud of
his well-planned stratagem, elated by success, and flattered
by the hope that he had extricated himself by his own
energy from all the perils which had of late appeared so
dark and difficult to shun.