You shall. Mark me, then judge." And rapidly, concisely, clearly, she
revealed to him the dread secret. She concealed nothing, neither the ends
of the conspiracy, nor the names of the conspirators. She asseverated to
him the appalling fact, that half the noblest, eldest families of Rome,
were either active members of the plot, sworn to spare no man, or secret
well-wishers, content at first to remain neutral, and then to share the
spoils of empire. According to her shewing, the Curii, the Portii, the
Syllae, the Cethegi, the great Cornelian house, the Vargunteii, the
Autronii, and the Longini, were all for the most part implicated, although
some branches of the Portian and Cornelian houses had not been yet
approached by the seducers. Crassus, she told him too, the richest citizen
of Rome, and Caius Julius Caesar, the most popular, awaited but the first
success to join the parricides of the Republic.

He listened thoughtfully, earnestly, until she had finished her narration,
and then shook his head doubtfully.

"I think," he said, "you must be deceived, poor Lucia. I do not see how
these things can be. These men, whom you have named, are all of the first
houses of the state; have all of them, either themselves or their
forefathers, bled for the commonwealth. How then should they now wish to
destroy it? They are men, too, of all parties and all factions; the Syllae,
the proudest and haughtiest aristocrats of Rome. Your father, also,
belonged to the Dictator's faction, while the Cornelii and the Curii have
belonged ever to the tribunes' party. How should this be? or how should
those whose pride, whose interest, whose power alike, rest on the
maintenance of their order, desire to mow down the Patrician houses, like
grass beneath the scythe, and give their honors to the rabble? How, above
all, should Crassus, whose estate is worth seven thousand talents,(16)
consisting, too, of buildings in the heart of Rome, join with a party
whose watch-words are fire and plunder, partition of estates, and death to
the rich? You see yourself that these things cannot be; that they are not
consistent. You must have been deceived by their insolent and drunken
boasting!"

"Consistent!" she replied, with vehement and angry irony. "Still harping
on consistency! Are virtuous men then consistent, that you expect vicious
men to be so? Oh, the false wisdom, the false pride of man! You tell me
these things cannot be--perhaps they cannot; but they _ar