University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
THE FORGE.

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,

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 Prætor 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 assa-gays,
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 ædile, who was
accompanied by ten or twelve of the equestrain 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 reach

ed 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 Carinæ, preceded
by his torch-bearers, and followed by a lictor[2] 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 ædile 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
Cæsar! long live the noble Cæsar!”—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 Cæsar!”

“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 Prætor Pomptinus, who cleared with very little
delicacy the confines of the Palatine, whereon it was announced
that the senate were now in secret session.