Things, bad begun, make strong themselves by ill.

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Yet not for that had the arch-traitor withdrawn his foot one hair's breadth from his purpose, or paused one moment in his career of crime and ruin.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, hara.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 const.i.tutions.

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 compa.s.sionating 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 n.o.ble Cicero," exclaimed the first who entered.

"By all the G.o.ds!" 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. .h.i.ther."

"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. n.o.ble Marcellus, have you good tidings of the commonwealth? and you, Metellus Scipio, and you Marcus Cra.s.sus? 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 Cra.s.sus' 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 Cra.s.sus; "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 n.o.ble 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 Cra.s.sus, he read them aloud, pausing from time to time, to meditate on the intention of the writer.

"Marcus Licinius Cra.s.sus," thus ran the first, "is spoken of by those, who love not Rome, as their lover and trusty comrade! Doth Marcus Licinius Cra.s.sus deem that the flames, which shall roar over universal Rome, will spare his houses only? Doth Marcus Cra.s.sus 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 a.s.sociates? Be wise! Take heed! The n.o.ble, who forsakes his order, earns scorn alone from his new partisans! When Cicero shall fall, all n.o.ble 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 n.o.bles 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 n.o.ble Roman! a true friend of his country!" he added, taking the hand of Cra.s.sus 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 Cra.s.sus, 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 n.o.ble, 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, n.o.ble 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.