consul, might each or all at any moment bring to light that
which he would have given all but life to bury in oblivion.

For a long time he had sat musing deeply on the perils of his false
position, but though he had taxed every energy, and strained every faculty
to devise some means by which to extricate himself from the toils, into
which he had so blindly rushed, he could think of no scheme, resolve upon
no course of action, which should set him at liberty, as he had been
before his unlucky interview with the conspirator.

At times he dreamed of casting himself at the feet of Cicero, and
confessing to that great and generous statesman all his temptations, all
his trials, all his errors; of linking himself heart and soul with the
determined patriots, who were prepared to live or die with the
constitution, and the liberties of the republic; but the oath!--the awful
imprecation, by which he had bound himself, by which he had devoted all
that he loved to the Infernal Gods, recurred to his mind, and shook it
with an earth-quake's power. And he, the bold free thinker, the daring and
unflinching soldier, bound hand and foot by a silly superstition,
trembled--aye, trembled, and confessed to his secret soul that there was
one thing which he ought to do, yet dared not!

Anon, maddened by the apparent hopelessness of ever being able to recur to
the straight road; of ever more regaining his own self-esteem, or the
respect of virtuous citizens--forced, as he seemed to be, to play a neutral
part--the meanest of all parts--in the impending struggle--of ever gaining
eminence or fame under the banners of the commonwealth; he dreamed of
giving himself up, as fate appeared to have given him already up, to the
designs of Catiline! He pictured to himself rank, station, power, wealth,
to be won under the ensigns of revolt; and asked himself, as many a
self-deluded slave of passion has asked himself before, if eminence,
however won, be not glory; if success in the world's eyes be not fame, and
rectitude and excellence.

But patriotism, the old Roman virtue, clear and undying in the hardest and
most corrupt hearts, roused itself in him to do battle with the juggling
fiends tempting him to his ruin; and whenever patriotism half-defeated
appeared to yield the ground, the image of his Julia--his Julia, never to
be won by any indirection, never to be deceived by any sophistry, never to
be deluded into smiling for one moment on a traitor--rose