the
speaker meant: for, as he fell, the horses came into collision, and it so
happened that the charger of the conqueror, excited by the fury of the
contest, laid hold of the other's neck with his teeth, and almost tore
away a piece of the muscular flesh at the very moment when the rider's
spur, as he fell, cut a long gash in his flank.

With a wild yelling neigh, the tortured brute yerked out his heels
viciously; and, as ill luck would have it, both took effect on the person
of his fallen master, one striking him a terrible blow on the chest, the
other shattering his collar bone and shoulder.

A dozen of the spectators sprang down from the seats and took him up
before Paullus could dismount to aid him; but, as they raised him from the
ground, his eyes were already glazing.

"Marcius has conquered me," he muttered in tones of deep mortification,
unconscious, as it would seem, of his agony, and wounded only by the
indomitable Roman pride; and with the words his jaw dropped, and his last
strife was ended.

"The fool!" exclaimed Cataline, with a bitter sneer; "what had he got to
do, that he should ride against Caius Marcius, when he could not so much
as keep his saddle, the fool!"

"He is gone!" cried another; "game to the last, brave Varus!"

"He came of a brave race," said a third; "but he rode badly!"

"At least not so well as Marcius," replied yet a fourth; "but who does? To
be foiled by him does not argue bad riding."

"Who does? why Paullus, here," cried Aurelius Victor; "I'll match him, if
he will ride, for a thousand sesterces--ten thousand, if you will."

"No! I'll not bet about it. I lost by this cursed chance," answered the
former speaker; "but Varus did not ride badly, I maintain it!" he added,
with the steadiness of a discomfited partisan.

"Ay! but he did, most pestilently," interposed Catiline, almost fiercely;
"but come, come, why don't they carry him away? we are losing all the
morning."

"I thought he was a friend of yours, Sergius," said another of the
bystanders, apparently vexed at the heartlessness of his manner.

"Why, ay! so he was," replied the conspirator; "but he is nothing now: nor
can my friendship aught avail him. It was his time and his fate! ours, it
may be, will come to-morrow. Nor do I see at all wherefore our sports
should not proceed, because a man has gone hence. Fifty men every day die
somewhere, while we are dining, drinking, kissing our mistresses or wives;
but do we st