The Roman Traitor Volume I Part 26

"Not in the least, I," answered the swordsmith. "Do you?"

"I did once."

"I never did."

"Then, in the name of all the G.o.ds, why did you join with them?"

"Because by the ruin of the great and n.o.ble, the poor must be gainers.

Because I owe what I can never pay. Because I l.u.s.t for what I can never win-luxury, beauty, wealth, and power! And if there come a civil strife, with proscription, confiscation, ma.s.sacre, it shall go hard with Caius Crispus, if he achieve not greatness!"

"And you," said the man, turning short round, without replying to the smith, and addressing the aged Ba.s.sus, "why did you join the plotters, you who are so crafty, so sagacious, and yet so earnest in the cause?"

"Because I have wrongs to avenge," answered the old man fiercely; a fiery flush crimsoning his sallow face, and his eye beaming lurid rage. "Wrongs, to repay which all the blood that flows in patrician veins were but too small a price!"

"Ha?" said the other, in a tone half meditative and half questioning, but in truth thinking little of the speaker, and reflecting only on the personal nature of the motives, which seemed to instigate them all. "Ha, is it indeed so?"

"Man," cried the old conspirator, springing forward and catching him by the arm. "Have you a wife, a child, a sister? If so, listen! you can understand me! I am, as you see old, very old! I have scars, also, all in front; honorable scars, of wounds inflicted by the Moorish a.s.sagays, of Jugurtha's desert hors.e.m.e.n-by the huge broad swords of the Teutones and Cimbri. My son, my only son fell, as an eagle-bearer, in the front rank of the hastati of the brave tenth legion-for we had wealth in those days, and both fought and voted in the centuries of the first cla.s.s. But our fields were uncultivated, while we were shedding our best blood for the state; and to complete the ruin, my rural slaves broke loose, and joined Spartacus the gladiator. Taken, they died upon the cross; and I was quite undone. Law suits and usury ate up the rest; and, for these eight years past, old Ba.s.sus has been penniless, and often cold, and always hungry.

But if this had been all, it is a soldier's part to bear cold and hunger-but not to bear disgrace. Man, there have been gyves on these legs-the whip has scarred these shoulders! Ye great G.o.ds! the whip! for what have the poor to do with their Portian or Valerian laws? Nor was this all-the eagle-bearer left a child, a sweet, fair, gentle girl, the image of my gallant boy, the only solace of my famishing old age. I told you she was fair-fatally fair-too fair for a plebeian's daughter, a plebeian's wife! Her beauty caught the l.u.s.tful eyes, inflamed the brutal heart of a patrician, one of the great Cornelii. It is enough! She was torn from my house, dishonored, and sent home, to die by her own hand, that would not pardon that involuntary sin! She died; the censors heard the tale; and scoffed at the teller of it! and that Cornelius yet sits in the senate; those censors who approved his guilt yet live-I say _live_! Is not that cause enough why I should join the plotters?"

"I cannot answer, No!" replied the other; "and you, Aulus, what is your reason?"

"I would win me a n.o.ble paramour. Hortensia's Julia is very soft and beautiful."

The stranger looked at him steadily for a moment, and an expression of disgust and horror crept over his bold face. "Alas!" he said at length, speaking, it would seem, to himself rather than to the others, "poor Rome!

unhappy country!"

But, as he spoke, the strong smith, whose suspicion would seem to have been excited, stepped forward and laid his hand upon the stranger's shoulder. "Look you," he said, "master. None of us know you here, I think, and we should all of us be glad to know, both who you are, and, if indeed you be of the faction, wherefore _you_ joined it, that you so closely scrutinize our motives."

"Because I was a fool, Caius Crispus; because I believed that, for a great stake, Romans might yet forget _self_, base and sordid _self_, and act as becomes patriots and men! Because I dreamed, smith, till morning light came back, and I awakened, and-"

"And the dream!" asked the smith eagerly, grasping the handle of his heavy hammer firmly, and setting his teeth hard.

"Had vanished," replied the other calmly, and looking him full in the eye.

"Bar the door, Aulus," cried the smith, hastily. "This fellow must die here, or he will betray us," and he caught him by the throat, as he spoke, with an iron grip, to prevent him from calling out or giving the alarm.

But the stranger, though not to be compared in bulk or muscular proportions with the gigantic artizan, shook off his grasp with contemptuous ease, and answered with a scornful smile,

"Betray you!-tush, I am Fulvius Flaccus."

Had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of the smith, he could not have recoiled with wilder wonder.

"What, Fulvius Flaccus, to whose great wrongs all injuries endured by us are but as flea-bites! Fulvius, the grandson of that Fulvius Flaccus, who-"

"Was murdered by Opimius, while striving for the liberties of Romans. But what is this! By Mars and Quirinus! there is something afoot without!"

And, as he uttered the words, he sprang to the wicket, which Aulus had not fastened, and gazed out earnestly into the darkness, through which the regular and steady tramp of men, advancing in ordered files, could now be heard distinctly.

The others were beside him in an instant, with terror and amazement on their faces.

They had not long to wait, before the cause of their alarm became visible.

It was a band of some five hundred stout young men of the upper cla.s.ses, well armed with swords and the oblong bucklers of the legion, though wearing neither casque nor cuira.s.s, led by a curule aedile, who was accompanied by ten or twelve of the equestrian order, completely armed, and preceded by his _apparitores_ or beadles, and half a dozen torch-bearers.

These men pa.s.sed swiftly on, in treble file, marching as fast as they could down the Sacred Way, until they reached the intersection of the street of Apollo; by which they proceeded straight up the ascent of the Palatine, whereon they were soon lost to view, among the splendid edifices that covered its slope and summit.

"By all the G.o.ds!" cried Caius Crispus, "This is exceedingly strange! An armed guard at this time of night!"

"Hist! here is something more."

And, as old Ba.s.sus spoke, Antonius, the consul, who was supposed to be attached to the faction of Catiline, came down a bye-street, from the lower end of the Carinae, preceded by his torch-bearers, and followed by a lictor(18) with his fasces. He was in full dress too, as one of the presiding magistrates of the senate, and bore in his hand his ivory sceptre, surmounted by an eagle.

As soon as he had pa.s.sed the door of the forge, Crispus stepped out into the street, motioning his guests to follow him, and desiring his foreman to lock the door.

"Let us follow the Consul, at a distance," he exclaimed, "my Ba.s.sus; for, as our Fulvius says, there is a.s.suredly something afoot; and it may be that it shall be well for us to know it: Come, let us follow quickly."

They hurried onward, as he proposed; and keeping some twenty or thirty paces in the rear of the Consul's train, soon reached the foot of the street of Apollo. At this point, however, Antonius paused with his lictor; for, in the opposite direction coming up from the Cerolian place toward the Forum, another line of torches might be seen flaming through the darkness, and, even at that distance, the axe heads of the lictors were visible, as they flashed out by fits in the red torch-light.

"By all the G.o.ds!" whispered Ba.s.sus, "it is the other consul, the new man from Arpinum. Believe me, my friends, this bodes no good to us! The Senate must have been convoked suddenly-and lo! here come the fathers. Look, look! this is stern Cato."

And, almost as he said the words, a powerfully made and very n.o.ble looking man pa.s.sed so near as to brush the person of the mechanic with the folds of his toga. His face, which was strongly marked, was stern certainly; but it was with the sternness of gravity and deep thought, coupled perhaps with something of melancholy-for it might be that he despaired at times of man's condition in this world, and of his prospects in the next-not of austerity or pride. His garb was plain in the extreme, and, although his tunic displayed the broad crimson facings, and his robe the pa.s.smenting of senatorial rank, both were of the commonest materials, and the narrowest and most simple cut.

"Hail, n.o.ble Cato!" said the mechanic, as the senator pa.s.sed by; but his voice faltered as he spoke, and there was something hollow and heartless in the tones, which conveyed the greeting.

Cato raised his eyes, which had been fixed on the ground in meditation, and perused the features of the speaker with a severe and scrutinizing gaze; and then, shaking his head sternly, as if dissatisfied with the result of his observation, "This is no time of night, sirrah smith," he said, "for thee, or such as thou, to be abroad. Thy daily work done, thou shouldst be at home with thy wife and children, not seeking profligate adventures, or breeding foul sedition in the streets. Go home! go home!

for shame on thee! thou art known and marked."

And the severe and virtuous n.o.ble strode onward, unattended he by any torch-bearer, or freedman, and soon joined his worthy friend, the great Latin orator, who had come up, and having united his train to that of the other consul, was moving up the Palatine.

In the meantime senator after senator arrived, some alone, with their slaves or freedmen lighting them along the streets; others in groups of two or three, all hurrying toward the Palatine. The smith and his friends, who had been at first the sole spectators of the shew, were now every moment joined by more and more of the rabble, until a great concourse was a.s.sembled; through which the n.o.bles had some difficulty in forcing their way toward the Temple of Apollo, in which their order was a.s.sembling, wherefore as yet they knew not.

At first the crowd was orderly enough, and quiet; but gradually beginning to ferment and grow warm, as it were by the closeness of its packing, cheers were heard, and loud acclamations, as any member of the popular faction made his way through it; and groans and yells and even curses succeeded, as any of the leaders of the aristocratic party strove to part its reluctant ma.s.ses.

And now a louder burst of acclamations, than any which had yet been heard, rang through the streets, causing the very roofs to tremble.

"What foolery have we here?" said the smith very sullenly, who, though he responded nothing to it, had by no means recovered from the rebuke of Cato. "Oh! yes! I see, I see," and he too added the power of his stentorian lungs to the clamor, as a young senator, splendidly dressed, and of an aspect that could not fail to attract attention, entered the little s.p.a.ce, which had been kept open at the corner of the two streets, by the efforts of an aedile and his beadles, who had just arrived on the ground.

He was not much, if at all, above the middle size, but admirably proportioned, whether for feats of agility and strength, or for the lighter graces of society. But it was his face more especially, and the magnificent expression of his features, that first struck the beholder-the broad imaginative brow, the keen large l.u.s.trous eye, pervading, clear, undazzled as the eagle's, the bold Roman nose, the resolute curve of the clean-cut mouth, full of indomitable pride and matchless energy-all these bespoke at once the versatile and various genius of the great statesman, orator, and captain, who was to be thereafter.

At this time, however, although he was advancing toward middle age, and had already shaken off some of the trammels which luxurious vice and heedless extravagance had cast around his young puissant intellect, he had achieved nothing either of fame or power. He had, it is true, given signs of rare intellect, but as yet they were signs only. Though his friends looked forward confidently to the time, when they should see him the first citizen of the republic; and it is more than possible, that in his own heart he contemplated even now the attainment of a more glorious, if more perilous elevation.

The locks of this n.o.ble looking personage, though not arranged in that effeminate fashion, which has been mentioned as characteristic of Cethegus and some others, were closely curled about his brow-for he, as yet, exhibited no tendency to that baldness, for which in after years he was remarkable-and reeked with the choicest perfumes. He wore the crimson-bordered toga of his senatorial rank, but under it, as it waved loosely to and fro, might be observed the gaudy hues of a violet colored banqueting dress, sprinkled with flowers of gold, as if he had been disturbed from some festive board by the summons to council.

As he pa.s.sed through the crowd, from which loud rose the shout, following him as he moved along-"Hail, Caius Caesar! long live the n.o.ble Caesar!"-his slaves scattered gold profusely among the mult.i.tude, who fought and scrambled for the glittering coin, still keeping up their clamorous greeting; while the dispenser of the wasteful largesse appearing to know every one, and to forget no face or name, even of the humblest, had a familiar smile and a cheery word for each citizen.

"Ha! Ba.s.sus, my old hero!" he exclaimed, "it is long since thou hast been to visit me. That proves, I hope, that things go better now-a-days at home. But come and see me, Ba.s.sus; I have something for thee to keep the cold from thy hearth, this freezing weather."

And he paused not to receive an answer, but moved forward a step or two, till his eye fell upon the swordsmith.

"What, Caius," he said, "st.u.r.dy Caius, absent from his forge so early-but I forgot, I forgot! you are a politician, perhaps you can tell me why they have roused me from the best cup of Ma.s.sic I have tasted this ten years.