riend, whatever befalls, so long as life is in my body,
remember you have a brother in Marcus Antonius."

The two friends pressed one another's hands, and entered the Curia
Pompeii. There in one of the foremost seats sat the Magnus,[145] the
centre of a great flock of adulators, who were basking in the sunshine
of his favour. Yet Drusus, as he glanced over at the Imperator,
thought that the great man looked harassed and worried--forced to be
partner in a scheme when he would cheerfully be absent. Fluttering in
their broad togas about the senate-house were Domitius, Cato, the
Marcelli, and Scipio, busy whipping into line the few remaining
waverers. As Cato passed the tribune's bench, and saw the handful of
Caesarians gathered there, he cast a glance of indescribable malignity
upon them, a glance that made Drusus shudder, and think again of the
horrors of the Tullianum.

[145] Pompeius was not allowed by law to attend sessions of the Senate
(so long as he was proconsul of Spain) when held inside the old city
limits; but the Curia which he himself built was outside the walls in
the Campus Martius. This meeting seems to have been convened there
especially that he might attend it.

"I know now how Cato looked," said he to Antonius, "when he denounced
the Catilinarians and urged that they should be put to death without
trial."

Antonius shrugged his shoulders, and replied:--

"Cato cannot forgive Caesar. When Caesar was consul, Cato interrupted
his speech, and Caesar had him haled off to prison. Marcus Cato never
forgives or forgets."

Curio, Caelius, and Quintus Cassius had entered the senate-house--the
only Caesarians present besides Antonius and his viator. The first two
went and took their seats in the body of the building, and Drusus
noticed how their colleagues shrank away from them, refusing to sit
near the supporters of the Gallic proconsul.

"_Eho!_" remarked Antonius, his spirits rising as the crisis drew on.
"This is much like Catilina's days, to be sure! No one would sit with
him when he went into the Senate. However, I imagine that these
excellent gentlemen will hardly find Caesar as easy to handle as
Catilina."

Again Lentulus was in his curule chair, and again the solemn farce of
taking the auspices, preparatory to commencing the session, was gone
through.

Then for the last time in that memorable series of debates Lentulus
arose and addressed the Senate, storming, browbeating, threatening