now, for I wax
somewhat weary, we will break up this conclave. We meet at the comitia!"

"And the Slave?" whispered Cethegus, with an inquiring accent, in his
ear--"the Slave, my Sergius?"

"Will tell no tales of us," replied the other, with a hoarse laugh,
"unless it be to Lamia."

Thus they spoke as they left the house; and ere the day had yet begun to
glimmer with the first morning twilight--so darkly did the clouds still
muster over the mighty city--went on their different ways toward their
several homes, unseen, and, as they fondly fancied, unsuspected.

CHAPTER III.

THE LOVERS.

Fair lovers, ye are fortunately met.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

On the same night, and almost at the same hour of the night, wherein that
dreadful conclave was assembled at the house of Laeca, a small domestic
group, consisting indeed only of three individuals, was gathered in the
tablinum, or saloon, of an elegant though modest villa, situate in the
outskirts of the city, fronting the street that led over the Mulvian
bridge to the AEmilian way, and having a large garden communicating in the
rear with the plebeian cemetery on the Esquiline.

It was a gay and beautiful apartment, of small dimensions, but replete
with all those graceful objects, those manifold appliances of refined
taste and pleasure, for which the Romans, austere and poor no longer, had,
since their late acquaintance with Athenian polish and Oriental luxury,
acquired a predilection--ominous, as their sterner patriots fancied, of
personal degeneracy and national decay.

Divided from the hall of reception by thick soft curtains, woven from the
choice wool of Calabria, and glowing with the richest hues of the Tyrian
crimson; and curtained with hangings of the same costly fabric around the
windows, both of which with the doorway opened upon a peristyle; that
little chamber wore an air of comfort, that charmed the eye more even than
its decorations. Yet these were of no common order; for the floor was
tesselated in rare patterns of mosaic work, showing its exquisite devices
and bright colors, where they were not concealed by a footstool of
embroidered tapestry. The walls were portioned out into compartments, each
framed by a broad border of gilded scroll-work on a crimson ground, and
containing an elaborately finished fresco painting; which, could they have
been seen by any critical eye of modern days, would have set at rest for