elf to that purpose immediately, congratulating himself, as he
did so, on the failure of his first project, and thinking how much better
it would be for him to stand as far as possible from the entrance, so as
to avoid even the few rays of dim star-light, which crept in through the
tangled ivy.

This was soon done; and in accordance with his afterthought, he sat down
on a projecting angle of the statue's marble couch, in the inmost corner
of the vault, facing the door, and having the pool of the fountain
interposed between that and himself.

For a few moments he sat thinking anxiously about the interview, which he
believed, not without cause, was likely to prove embarrassing, at least,
if not perilous. But, when he confessed to himself, which he was very soon
compelled to do, that he could shape nothing of his own course, until he
should hear what were the plans in which Catiline desired his cooperation;
and when time fled and the man came not, his mind began to wander, and to
think about twenty gay and pleasant subjects entirely disconnected with
the purpose for which he had come thither. Then he fell gradually into a
sort of waking dream, or vision, as it were, of wandering fancies, made up
partly of the sounds which he actually heard with his outward ears, though
his mind took but little note of them, and partly of the occurrences in
which he had been mixed up, and the persons with whom he had been brought
into contact within the last two or three days. The gory visage of the
murdered slave, the sweet and calm expression of his own Julia, the
truculent eyes and sneering lip of Catiline, and the veiled glance and
voluptuous smile of his too seductive daughter, whirled still before him
in a strange sort of human phantasmagoria, with the deep searching look of
the consul orator, the wild glare of the slaughtered Volero, and the stern
face, grand and proud in his last agony, of the dying Varus.

In this mood he had forgotten altogether where he was, and on what
purpose, when a deep voice aroused him with a start, and though he had
neither heard his footstep, nor seen him enter, Catiline stood beside his
elbow.

"What ho!" he exclaimed, "Paullus, have I detained you long in this dark
solitude."

"Nay, I know not how long," replied the other, "for I had fallen into
strange thoughts, and forgotten altogether the lapse of time; but here
have I been since the fourth hour."

"And it is now already past the fifth," said C