me--my heart would not throb, as
it now does, nor my voice tremble with anxiety.

"Cisalpine Gaul is tranquil as the vale of Arno! No bow is bended in the
Teutonic forests, unless against the elk or urus! The legions have not
turned their backs before the scymetars of Pontus! The salt sown in the
market-place of Carthage hath borne no crop, but desolation. The one-eyed
conqueror is nerveless in the silent grave!

"But were all these, now peaceful, subjugated, lifeless, were all these, I
say, in arms, victorious, present, upon this soil of Italy, around these
walls of Rome, I should doubt nothing, fear nothing, expect nothing, but
present strife, and future victory!

"There is--there is, that spark of valor, that clear light of Roman virtue,
alive in every heart; yea! even of our maids and matrons, that they would
brook no hostile step even upon the threshold of our empire!

"What then do I foresee? what fear?
Massacre--parricide--conflagration--treason! Treason in Rome itself--in the
Forum--in the Campus--_here!_ Here in this holiest and safest spot! Here in
the shrine of that great God, who, ages since, when this vast Rome was but
a mud-built hamlet, that golden capitol, a straw-thatched shed, rolled
back the tide of war, and stablished here, here, where my foot is fixed,
the immortal seat of empire!

"Even now as I turn my eyes around me they fall abhorrent on the faces,
they read indignant the designs, of their country's parricides!

"Aye! Conscript Fathers, praetorians, patricians of the great old houses, I
see them in their places here; ready to vote immediately on their own
monstrous schemes! I see them here, adulterers, forgers of wills,
assassins, spendthrifts, poisoners, defilers of vestal virgins, contemners
of the Gods, parricides of the Republic! I see them, with daggers
sharpened against all true Romans, lurking beneath their fringed and
perfumed tunics! Misled by strange ambition, maddened with lust, drunk
with despairing guilt, athirst for the blood of citizens!

"I see them! you all see them! Will you await in coward apathy, until they
shake you from your lethargy--until the outcries of your murdered children,
of your ravished wives arouse you, until you awake from your sleep and
find Rome in ashes?

"You hear me--you gaze on me in wonder, you ask me with your eyes what it
is that I mean I who are the traitors? Lend me your ears then, and fix
well your minds, lest they shrink in disgust and wonde