volved beyond any hope of extrication.

He forgot, that to satisfy an insane and unjustifiable love of adventure,
and a false curiosity, he had associated himself with a man whom he
believed, if he did not actually know, to be infamous and capable of any
crime.

He forgot, that, admitted into that man's house in friendship, he had
attempted to undermine his daughter's honor; and had felt no remorse, till
he learned that his success was owing to connivance--that his own treason
had been met and repaid by deeper treason.

He forgot, that for a wanton's love, he had betrayed the brightest, and
the purest being that drew the breath of life, from the far Alps, to the
blue waters of the far Tarentum--that he had broken his soul's plighted
faith--that he was himself, first, a liar, perjurer, and villain.

Alas! it is the inevitable consequence, the first fruit, as it were, of
crime, that guilt is still prolific; that the commission of the first ill
deed, leads almost surely to the commission of a second, of a third, until
the soul is filed and the heart utterly corrupted, and the wretch given
wholly up to the dominion of foul sin, and plunged into thorough
degradation.

Arvina had thought lightly, if at all, of his first luxurious sin, but now
to the depth of his secret soul, he felt that he was emmeshed and
entangled in the deepest villainy.

All that he ever had yet heard hinted darkly or surmised of Catiline's
gigantic schemes of wickedness, rushed on him, all at once! He doubted
nothing any longer; it was clear to him as noonday; distinct and definite
as if it had been told to him in so many words; the treason to the state
concealed by individual murder; and he, a sworn accomplice--nay, a sworn
slave to this murderer and traitor!

Nor was this all; his peril was no less than his guilt; equal on either
side--sure ruin if he should be true to his country, and scarce less sure,
if he should join its parricides. For, though he had not dared say so much
to Catiline, he had already sent the poniard to the house of Cicero, and a
brief letter indicating all that he had learned from Volero. This he had
done in the interval between the Campus and his unlucky visit to the house
of Catiline, whom he then little deemed to be the man of whom he was in
quest.

Doubtless, ere this time, the cutler had been summoned to the consul's
presence, and the chief magistrate of the Republic had learned that the
murderer of his slave was th