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 G.o.ds," he said, as he entered, in a deep and solemn tone, "the G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 emanc.i.p.ated from the superst.i.tion 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 l.u.s.tre. 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 G.o.ds have Rome in their keeping, and, to save her, they will not let _me_ perish.

Fare ye well, n.o.bles. I must be private with this woman."

After the ceremonial of the time, his visitors departed; but as they pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds on the small altar by the _impluvium_, Marcus Marcellus caught a pa.s.sing view of a pair of large languishing blue eyes, and a face of rare beauty.

"By the great G.o.ds!" he whispered in Cra.s.sus' 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 b.l.o.o.d.y."

"But such a braggart!" answered Marcellus.

"I have known braggarts fight," said Cra.s.sus. "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.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CRISIS.

He is about it. The doors are open.

MACBETH.

The morning had scarcely dawned, after that dismal and tempestuous night, when three men were observed by some of the earlier citizens, pa.s.sing up the Sacred Way, toward the Cerolian Place.

It was not so much that the earliness of the hour attracted the notice of these spectators-for the Romans were a matutinal people, even in their most effeminate and luxurious ages, and the sun found few loiterers in their chambers, when he came forth from his oriental gates-as that the manner and expression of these men themselves were singular, and such as might well excite suspicion.

They all walked abreast, two clad in the full garb of Senators, and one in the distinctive dress of Roman knighthood. No one had heard them speak aloud, nor seen them whisper, one to the other. They moved straight onward, steadily indeed and rather slowly, but with something of consciousness in their manner, glancing furtively around them from beneath their bent brows, and sometimes even casting their eyes over their shoulders, as if to see whether they were followed.

At about a hundred paces after these three, not however accompanying them, or attached to their party, so far at least as appearances are considered, two large-framed fellows, clothed in the dark gray frocks worn by slaves and gladiators, came strolling in the same direction.

These men had the auburn hair, blue eyes, and ma.s.sive, if not stolid cast of features peculiar to northern races, at that time the conquered slaves, though destined soon to be the victors, of Rome's gigantic power.

When the first three reached the corner of the next block of buildings, to the corner of that magnificent street called the Carin, they paused for a few moments; and, after looking carefully about them, to mark whether they were observed or not, held a short whispered conversation, which their stern faces, and impa.s.sioned gestures seemed to denote momentous.

While they were thus engaged, the other two came sauntering along, and pa.s.sed them by, apparently unheeded, and without speaking, or saluting them.

Those three men were the knight Caius Cornelius, a friend and distant kinsman of Cethegus, who was the second of the number, and Lucius Vargunteius, a Senator, whose name has descended only to posterity, through the black infamy of the deed, which he was even at that moment meditating.

Spurred into action by the menaces and violence of Catiline, who had now resolved to go forth and commence open warfare from the entrenched camp prepared in the Appenines, by Caius Manlius, these men had volunteered, on the previous night, at a second meeting held in the house of Laeca, to murder Cicero, with their own hands, during his morning levee.

To this end, they had now come forth thus early, hoping so to antic.i.p.ate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless.

Three stout men were they, as ever went forth armed and determined for premeditated crime; stout in frame, stout of heart, invulnerable by any physical apprehension, una.s.sailable by any touch of conscience, pitiless, fearless, utterly depraved.

Yet there was something in their present enterprise, that half daunted them. Something in the character of the man, whom they were preparing to a.s.sa.s.sinate-something of undefined feeling, suggesting to them the certainty of the whole world's reproach and scorn through everlasting ages, however present success "might trammel up the consequence."

Though they would not have confessed it to their own hearts, they were reluctant toward their task; and this unadmitted reluctance it was, which led them to pause and parley, under the show of arranging their schemes, which had in truth been fully organized on the preceding night.

They were too far committed, however, to recede; and it is probable that no one of them, although their hearts were full almost to suffocation, as they neared the good Consul's door, had gone so far as to think of withdrawing his hand from the deed of blood.

The outer door of the vestibule was open; and but one slave was stationed in the porch; an old man quite unarmed, not having so much even as a porter's staff, who was sitting on a stone bench, in the morning sunshine.

As the conspirators ascended the marble steps, which gave access to the vestibule, and entered the beautiful Tuscan colonnade, the two Germans, who had stopped and looked back for a moment, seeing them pa.s.s in, set off as hard as they could run, through an adjoining street toward the house of Catiline, which was not very far distant.

It was not long ere they reached it, and entered without question or hindrance, as men familiar and permitted.

In a small room, adjoining the inner peristyle, the master of the house was striding to and fro across the tesselated floor, in a state of perturbation, extreme even for him; whose historian has described him with bloodless face, and evil eyes, irregular and restless motions, and the impress of frantic guilt, ever plain to be seen in his agitated features.

Aurelia Orestilla sat near him, on a low cushioned stool, with her superb Italian face livid and sicklied by unusual dread. Her hands lay tightly clasped upon her knee-her lips were as white as ashes. Her large l.u.s.trous eyes, burning and preternaturally distended, were fixed on the haggard face of her husband, and followed him, as he strode up and down the room in impotent anxiety and expectation.

Yet she, privy as she was to all his blackest councils, the instigator and rewarder of his most hideous crime, knowing the h.e.l.l of impotent agony that was consuming his heart, she dared not address him with any words of hope or consolation.

At such a crisis all ordinary phrases of comfort or cheering love, seem but a mockery to the spirit, which can find no rest, until the doubts that hara.s.s it are ended; and this she felt to be the case, and, had her own torturing expectation allowed her to frame any speech to soothe him, she would not have ventured on its utterance, certain that it would call forth a torrent of imprecation on her head, perhaps a burst of violence against her person.

The very affections of the wicked, are strangely mixed at times, with more discordant elements; and it would have been a hard question to solve, whether that horrible pair most loved, or hated one another.