Clodius was ready for the occasion.

While the expediency of putting Clodius on his trial was being
discussed, Pompey had returned from the East, and taken up his residence
outside the city, because he was awaiting his triumph. The General, to
whom it was given to march through the city with triumphal glory, was
bound to make his first entrance after his victories with all his
triumphal appendages, as though he was at that moment returning from the
war with all his warlike spoils around him. The usage had obtained the
strength of law, but the General was not on that account debarred from
city employment during the interval. The city must be taken out to him
instead of his coming into the city. Pompey was so great on his return
from his Mithridatic victories that the Senate went out to sit with him
in the suburbs, as he could not sit with it within the walls. We find
him taking part in these Clodian discussions. Cicero at once writes of
him to Athens with evident dissatisfaction. When questioned about
Clodius, Pompey had answered with the grand air of aristocrat. Crassus
on this occasion, between whom and Cicero there was never much
friendship, took occasion to belaud the late great Consul on account of
his Catiline successes. Pompey, we are told, did not bear this
well.[227] Crassus had probably intended to produce some such effect.
Then Cicero had spoken in answer to the remarks of Crassus, very glibly,
no doubt, and had done his best to "show off" before Pompey, his new
listener.[228] More than six years had passed since Pompey could have
heard him, and then Cicero's voice had not become potential in the
Senate. Cicero had praised Pompey with all the eloquence in his power.
"Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius," he had said, in the last Catiline
oration to the Senate; and Pompey, though he had not heard the words
spoken, knew very well what had been said. Such oratory was never lost
upon those whom it most concerned the orator to make acquainted with it.
But in return for all this praise, for that Manilian oration which had
helped to send him to the East, for continual loyalty, Pompey had
replied to Cicero with coldness. He would now let Pompey know what was
his standing in Rome. "If ever," he says to Atticus, "I was strong with
my grand rhythm, with my quick rhetorical passages, with enthusiasm, and
with logic, I was so now. Oh, the noise that I made on the occasion! You
know what my voice can do. I need say no more about i