the daring traitor, who
stood with his arms folded on his breast, and a malignant sneer of
contempt on his lip, mocking their impotent displeasure, tend to disarm
their wrath.

Four times he raised his voice, four times a cry of indignation drowned
his words, and at length, seeing that he could obtain no farther hearing,
he resumed his seat with an expression fiendishly malignant, and a fierce
imprecation on Rome, and all that it contained.

After a little time, the confusion created by the audacity of that strange
being moderated; order and silence were restored, and, upon Cato's motion,
the Senate was divided.

Whatever might have been the result had Catiline been silent, the majority
was overwhelming. The very partisans and favorers of the conspiracy, not
daring to commit themselves more openly, against so strong a
manifestation, passed over one by one, and voted with the consul.

Catiline stood alone, against the vote of the whole order. Yet stood and
voted resolute, as though he had been conscious of the right.

The vote was registered, the Senate declared martial law, investing the
consuls with dictatorial power, by the decree which commanded them to SEE
THAT THE REPUBLIC TAKES NO HARM.

The very tribunes, factious and reckless as they were, potent for ill and
powerless for good, presumed not to interpose. Not even Lucius Bestia,
deep as he was in the design--Bestia, whose accusation of the consul from
the rostrum was the concerted signal for the massacre, the
conflagration--not Bestia himself, relied so far on the inviolability of
his person, as to intrude his VETO.

The good cause had prevailed--the good Consul triumphed! The Senate was
dismissed, and as the stream of patrician togas flowed through the temple
door conspicuous, the rash and reckless traitor shouldered the mass to and
fro, dividing it as a brave galley under sail divides the murmuring but
unresisting billows.

Once in the throng he touched Julius Caesar's robe as he brushed onward,
and as he did so, a word fell on his ear in the low harmonious tones which
marked the orator, second to none in Rome, save Cicero alone!--

"Fear not," it said--"another day will come!--"

"Fear!--" exclaimed the Conspirator in a hoarse cry, half fury, half
contempt. "What is fear?--I know not the thing, nor the word!--Go, prate of
fear to Cicero, and he will understand you!"

These words perhaps alienated one who might have served him well.

But so it eve