University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
THE PERIL.

Macbeth.

Sixteen days had elapsed, since the conspirators were
again frustrated at the Consular Comitia.

Yet not for that had the arch-traitor withdrawn his foot
one hair's breadth from his purpose, or paused one moment
in his career of crime and ruin.

There is, beyond doubt, a necessity—not as the ancients
deemed, supernatural, and the work of fate, but a natural
moral necessity—arising from the very quality of crime itself,
which spurs the criminal on to new guilt, fresh atrocity.

In the dark path of wickedness there is no halting place;
the wretched climber must turn his face for ever upward,
for ever onward; if he look backward his fall is inevitable,
his doom fixed.

So was it proved with Catiline. To gain impunity for
his first deed of cruelty and blood, another and another
were forced on him, until at last, harassed and maddened
by the consciousness of untold guilt, his frantic spirit could
find no respite, save in the fierce intoxication of excitement,
the strange delight of new atrocity.

Add to this, that, knowing himself anticipated and discovered,
he knew also that if spared for a time by his opponent,
it was no lack of will, but lack of opportunity
alone to crush him, that held the hands of Cicero inactive.

Thus, although for a time the energies of his weaker
comrades sank paralysed by the frustration of their schemes,
and by the certainty that they were noted and observed
even in their most secret hours, his stronger and more vehement
spirit found only in the greater danger the greater
stimulus to action.

Sixteen days had elapsed, and gradually, as the conspirators
found that no steps were taken by the government
for their apprehension or punishment, they too waxed
bolder, and began to fancy, in their insolent presumption,
that the republic was too weak or too timid to enforce its
own laws upon undoubted traitors.

All the causes, moreover, which had urged them at first
to councils so desperate, existed undiminished, nay, exaggerated
by delay.

Their debts, their inability to raise those funds which
their boundless profusion rendered necessary, still maddened
them; and to these the consciousness of detected
guilt, and that “necessity which,” in the words of their
chief, “makes even the timid brave,” were superadded.

The people and the Senate, who had all, for a time,
been vehemently agitated by a thousand various emotions
of anger, fear, anxiety, revenge, forgetting, as all popular
bodies are wont to do, the past danger in the present security,
were beginning to doubt whether they had not
been alarmed at a shadow; and were half inclined to question
the existence of any conspiracy, save in the fears of
their Consul.

It was well for Rome at that hour, that there was still in
the commonwealth, a counterpoise to the Democratic Spirit;
which, vehement and energetical beyond all others in
sudden and great emergencies, is ever restless and impatient
of protracted watchfulness and preparation, and lacks
that persistency and resolute endurance which seems peculiar
to aristocratic constitutions.

And now especially were demonstrated these opposite
characteristics; for while the lower orders, and the popular
portion of the Senate, who had been in the first instance
most strenuous in their alarm, and most urgent for strong
measures, were now hesitating, doubting, and almost compassionating
the culprits, who had fallen under such a load
of obloquy, the firmer and more moderate minds, were

guarding the safety of the commonwealth in secret, and
watching, through their unknown emissaries, every movement
of the traitors.

It was about twelve o'clock at night, on the eighth day
before the Ides, corresponding to our seventh of November,
when the Consul was seated alone in the small but
sumptuous library, which has been described above, meditating
with an anxious and care-worn expression, over
some papers which lay before him on the table.

No sound had been heard in the house for several hours;
all its inhabitants except the Consul only, with the slave
who had charge of the outer door, and one faithful freedman,
having long since retired to rest.

But from without, the wailing of the stormy night-wind
rose and fell in melancholy alternations of wild sobbing
sound, and breathless silence; and the pattering of heavy
rain was distinctly audible on the flat roofs, and in the
flooded tank, or impluvium, which occupied the centre of
the hall.

It was in one of the lulls of the autumnal storm, that a
heavy knock was heard on the pannel of the exterior door,
reverberating in long echoes, through the silent vestibule,
and the vast colonnades of the Atrium and peristyle.

At that dead hour of night, such a summons would have
seemed strange in any season: it was now almost alarming.

Nor, though he was endowed pre-eminently with that
moral strength of mind which is the highest quality of
courage, and was by no means deficient in mere physical
bravery, did Cicero raise his head from the perusal of his
papers, and listen to that unwonted sound, without some
symptoms of anxiety and perturbation.

So thoroughly acquainted as he was, with the desperate
wickedness, the infernal energy, and absolute fearlessness
of Catiline, it could not but occur to him instantly, when
he heard that unusual summons, at a time when all the innocent
world was buried in calm sleep, how easy and obvious
a mode of liberation from all danger and restraint, his
murder would afford to men so daring and unscrupulous,
as those against whom he was playing, for no less a stake
than life or death.

There was, he well knew, but a single slave, and he old
and unarmed, in the vestibule, nor was the aged and effeminate

Greek freedman, one on whom reliance could be
placed in a deadly struggle.

All these things flashed suddenly upon the mind of Cicero,
as the heavy knocking fell upon his ear, followed by a
murmur of many voices, and the tread of many feet without.

He arose quietly from the bronze arm-chair, on which he
had been sitting, walked across the room, to a recess beside
the book-shelves, and reached down from a hook, on which
it hung, among a collection of armor and weapons, a stout,
straight, Roman broad-sword, with a highly adorned hilt
and scabbard.

Scarcely, however, had he taken the weapon in his hand,
before the door was thrown open, and his freedman ushered
in three men, attired in the full costume of Roman
Senators.

“All hail, at this untimely hour, most noble Cicero,” exclaimed
the first who entered.

“By all the Gods!” cried the second, “rejoiced I am, O
Consul, to see that you are on your guard; for there is
need of watchfulness, in truth, for who love the republic.”

“Which need it is, in short,” added the third, “that has
brought us hither.”

“Most welcome at all times,” answered Cicero, laying
aside the broad-sword with a smile, “though of a truth, I
thought it might be less gracious visitors. Noble Marcellus,
have you good tidings of the commonwealth? and you,
Metellus Scipio, and you Marcus Crassus? Friends to the
state, I know you; and would trust that no ill news hath
held you watchful.”

“Be not too confident of that, my Consul,” replied Scipio.
“Peril there is, at hand to the commonwealth, in your
person.”

“We have strange tidings here, confirming all that you
made known to the Senate, on the twelfth day before the
Calends, in letters left by an unknown man with Crassus'
doorkeeper this evening,” said Marcellus. “We were at
supper with him, when they came, and straightway determined
to accompany him hither.”

“In my person!” exclaimed Cicero—“Then is the peril
threatened from Lucius Sergius Catiline! were it for myself
alone, this were a matter of small moment; but, seeing

that I hold alone the clues of this dark plot, it were disastrous
to the state, should ought befall me, who have set
my life on this cast to save my country.”

“Indeed disastrous!” exclaimed the wealthy Crassus;
“for these most horrible and cursed traitors are sworn, as
it would seem, to consume this most glorious city of the
earth, and all its stately wealth, with the sword and fire.”

“To destroy all the noble houses,” cried Scipio, “and
place the vile and loathsome rabble at the helm of state.”

“All this, I well knew, of old,” said Cicero calmly.
“But I pray you, my friends, be seated; and let me see
these papers.”

And taking the anonymous letters from the hands of
Crassus, he read them aloud, pausing from time to time,
to meditate on the intention of the writer.

“Marcus Licinius Crassus,” thus ran the first, “is spoken
of by those, who love not Rome, as their lover and trusty
comrade! Doth Marcus Licinius Crassus deem that the
flames, which shall roar over universal Rome, will spare his
houses only? Doth Marcus Crassus hope, that when the
fetters shall be stricken from the limbs of every slave in
Rome, his serfs alone will hold their necks beneath a voluntary
yoke?—Doth he imagine that, when all the gold of
the rich shall be distributed among the needy, his seven
thousand talents shall escape the red hands of Catiline and
his associates? Be wise! Take heed! The noble, who
forsakes his order, earns scorn alone from his new partisans!
When Cicero shall fall, all noble Romans shall perish lamentably,
with him—when the great Capitol itself shall
melt in the conflagration, all private dwellings shall go
down in the common ruin. Take counsel of a friend, true,
though unknown and humble! Hold fast to the republic!
rally the nobles and the rich, around the Consul! Ere the
third day hence, he shall be triumphant, or be nothing!—
Fare thee well!”

“This is mysterious, dark, incomprehensible,” said Cicero,
as he finished reading it. “Had it been sent to me. I
should have read it's secret thus, as intended to awake suspicion,
in my mind, of a brave and noble Roman! a true
friend of his country!” he added, taking the hand of Crassus
in his own. “Yet, even so, it would have failed. For
as soon would I doubt the truth of heaven itself, as question

the patriotic faith of the conqueror of Spartacus! But
left at thy house, my Crassus, it seems almost senseless and
unmeaning. What have we more?

“The snake is scotched, not slain! The spark is concealed,
not quenched! The knife is sharp yet, though it
lie in the scabbard! When was conspiracy beat down by
clemency, or treason conquered by timidity? Let those
who would survive the ides of November, keep their loins
girded, and their eyes wakeful. What I am, you may not
learn, but this much only—I was a noble, before I was a
beggar! a Roman, before I was a—traitor!”

“Ha!” continued the consul, examining the paper
closely, “This is somewhat more pregnant—the Ides of
November!—the Ides—is it so?—They shall be met withal!—It
is a different hand-writing also; and here is a third
—Ha!”

“A third, plainer than the first,” said Metellus Scipio—
“pray mark it.”

“Three men have sworn—who never swear in vain—a
knight, a senator, and yet a senator again! Two of the
three, Cornelii! Their knives are keen, their hands sure,
their hearts resolute, against the new man from Arpinum!
Let those who love Cicero, look to the seventh day, before
November's Ides.”

“The seventh day—ha? so soon? Be it so,” said the
undaunted magistrate. “I am prepared for any fortune.”

“Consul,” exclaimed the Freedman, again entering, “I
watched with Geta, in the vestibule, since these good fathers
entered; and now there have come two ladies clad
in the sacred garb of vestals. Two lictors wait on them.
They ask to speak with the consul.”

“Admit them, madman!” exclaimed Cicero; “admit
them with all honor. You have not surely kept them in
the vestibule?”

“Not so, my Consul. They are seated on the ivory
chairs in the Tablinum.”

“Pardon me, noble friends. I go to greet the holy virgins.
This is a strange and most unusual honour. Lead
the way, man.”

And with the words, he left the room in evident anxiety
and haste; while his three visitors stood gazing each on
the other, in apprehension mingled with wonder.

In a few moments, however, he returned alone, very
pale, and wearing on his fine features a singular expression
of awe and dignified self-complacency, which seemed to
be almost at variance with each other.

“The Gods,” he said, as he entered, in a deep and solemn
tone, “the Gods themselves attest Rome's peril by
grand and awful portents. The College of the Vestals
sends tidings, that `The State totters to its fall'!”

“May the Great Gods avert!” cried his three auditors,
simultaneously, growing as pale as death, and faltering out
their words from ashy lips in weak or uncertain accents.

“It is so!” said Cicero; who, though a pure Deist, in
truth, and no believer in Rome's monstrous polytheism,
was not sufficiently emancipated from the superstition of
the age to dispute the truth of prodigies and portents. “It
is so. The priestess, who watched the sacred flame on the
eternal hearth, beheld it leap thrice upward in a clear spire
of vivid and unearthly light, and lick the vaulted roof-stones
—thrice vanish into utter gloom! Once, she believed the
fire extinct, and veiled her head in more than mortal terror.
But, after momentary gloom, it again revived, while
three strange sighs, mightier than any human voice, came
breathing from the inmost shrine, and waved the flame fitfully
to and fro, with a dread pallid lustre. The College
bids the Consul to watch for himself and the republic, these
three days, or ill shall come of it.”

Even as he spoke, a bustle was again heard in the vestibule,
as of a fresh arrival, and again the freedman entered.

“My Consul, a veiled patrician woman craves to confer
with you, in private.”

“Ha! all Rome is afoot, methinks, to-night. Do you
know her, my Glaucias?”

“I saw her once before, my Consul. On the night of
the fearful storm, when the falchion of flame shook over
Rome, and the Senate was convened suddenly.”

“Ha! She! it is well—it is very well! we shall know
all anon.” And his face lighted up joyously, as he spoke.
“Excuse me, Friends and Fathers. This is one privy to
the plot, with tidings of weight doubtless. Thanks for your
news, and good night; for I must pray you leave me.
Your warning hath come in good season, and I will not be

taken unaware. The Gods have Rome in their keeping,
and, to save her, they will not let me perish. Fare ye
well, nobles. I must be private with this woman.”

After the ceremonial of the time, his visitors departed;
but as they passed through the atrium, they met the lady,
conducted by the old Greek freedman.

Little expecting to meet any one at that untimely hour,
she had allowed her veil to fall down upon her shoulders;
and, although she made a movement to recover it, as she
saw the Senators approaching her by the faint light of the
single lamp which burned before the household gods on
the small altar by the impluvium, Marcus Marcellus caught
a passing view of a pair of large languishing blue eyes,
and a face of rare beauty.

“By the great Gods!” he whispered in Crassus' ear,
“that was the lovely Fulvia.”

“Ha! Curius' paramour!” replied the other. “Can
it be possible that the stern Consul amuses his light hours,
with such high-born harlotry?”

“Not he! not he!” said Scipio. “I doubt not Curius
is one of them! He is needy, and bold, and bloody.”

“But such a braggart!” answered Marcellus.

“I have known braggarts fight,” said Crassus. “There
was a fellow, who served in the fifth legion; he fought before
the standard of the hastati; and I deemed him a coward
ever, but in the last strife with Spartacus he slew six
men with his own hand. I saw it.”

“I have heard of such things,” said Scipio. “But it
grows late. Let us move homeward.” And then he added,
as he was leaving the Consul's door, “If he can trust
his household, Cicero should arm it. My life on it! They
will attempt to murder him.”

“He has given orders even now to arm his slaves,” said
the Freedman, in reply; “and so soon as they have got
their blades and bucklers, I go to invite hither the surest of
his clients.”

“Thou shalt do well to do so—But see thou do it silently.”

And with the words, they hurried homeward through the
dark streets, leaving the wise and virtuous magistrate in
conference with his abandoned, yet trustworthy informant,
Fulvia.