n six months. He must
fall, even if we do nothing." How often might it be said that the murder
of an English minister had been intended if the utterings of such words
be taken as a testimony! He quotes again--Ad Att., lib. xiii., 40--"What
good news could Brutus hear of Caesar, unless that he hung himself?" This
is to be taken as meditating Caesar's death, and is quoted by a French
critic, after two thousand years, in proof of Cicero's fatal
ill-will![174] The whole tenor of Cicero's letters proves that he had
never entertained the idea of Caesar's destruction.

How long before the time the conspiracy may have been in existence we
have no means of knowing; but we feel that Cicero was not a man likely
to be taken into the plot. He would have dissuaded Brutus and Cassius.
Judging from what we know of his character, we think that he would have
distrusted its success. Though he rejoiced in it after it was done, he
would have been wretched while burdened with the secret. At any rate, we
have the fact that he was not so burdened. The sight of Caesar's
slaughter, when he saw it, must have struck him with infinite surprise,
but we have no knowledge of what his feelings may have been when the
crowd had gathered round the doomed man. Cicero has left us no
description of the moment in which Caesar is supposed to have gathered
his toga over his face so that he might fall with dignity. It certainly
is the case that when you take your facts from the chance correspondence
of a man you lose something of the most touching episodes of the day.
The writer passes these things by, as having been surely handled
elsewhere. It is always so with Cicero. The trial of Milo, the passing
of the Rubicon, the battle of the Pharsalus, and the murder of Pompey
are, with the death of Caesar, alike unnoticed. "I have paid him a visit
as to whom we spoke this morning. Nothing could be more forlorn."[175]
It is thus the next letter begins, after Caesar's death, and the person
he refers to is Matius, Caesar's friend; but in three weeks the world had
become used to Caesar's death. The scene had passed away, and the
inhabitants of Rome were already becoming accustomed to his absence. But
there can be no doubt as to Cicero's presence at Caesar's fall. He says
so clearly to Atticus.[176] Morabin throws a doubt upon it. The story
goes that Brutus, descending from the platform on which Caesar had been
seated, and brandishing the bloody dagger in his hand, appealed