The Roman Traitor Volume Ii Part 26

It was in perfect keeping with the Roman character, that a man, hopeless of success, should die without an effort; and to the fullest, Lentulus acted out that character.

Impa.s.sive and unmoved, he went to his death. He disgraced his evil life by no cowardice in death; by no fruitless call upon the people for a.s.sistance, by no vain cry to the n.o.bles for mercy.

But it was the impa.s.sibility of the Epicurean, not of the Stoic, that sustained him.

He went to die, like his brother democrats of France, with the madness of Atheism in his heart, the mirth of Perdition on his tongue.

They two, the Convict and the Consul, ascended a little, two or three steps, to the left, and entered a large apartment, paved, walled, and roofed with stone; but in the centre of the floor there was a small round aperture.

There were a dozen persons in that guard-room, four of whom were his fellow-traitors-Gabinius, Statilius, Caeparius, and Cethegus-two praetors, four legionaries, and two Moorish slaves composed the group, until with the Triumvirs, and his twelve lictors, Cicero entered.

"Ha! my Caeparius!" exclaimed Lentulus, who had not seen him since the morning of his arrest. "We have met again. But I slept my sleep out. Thou might'st as well have slept too; for we are both met here"-

"To die! to die! Great G.o.ds! to die!" cried Caeparius utterly overcome, and almost fainting with despair.

"Great G.o.ds indeed!" replied Lentulus with his accustomed half-sardonic, half-indolent sneer. "They must be great, indeed, to let such a puppet as that," and he pointed to Cicero, as he spoke, "do as he will with us. To die! to die! Tush-what is that but to sleep? to sleep without the trouble of awaking, or the annoyance of to-morrow? What sayest thou, my Cethegus?"

"That thou art a sluggard, a fool, and a coward; curses! curses! curses upon thee!" And he made an effort to rush against his comrade, as if to strike him; and, when the guards seized him and dragged him back, he shook his fist at Cicero, and gnashed his teeth, and howling out, "Thou too!

thou too shalt die proscribed, and thy country's foe!" by a sudden effort cast off the men who held him, and crying, "Slaves and dastards, see how a Roman n.o.ble dies," rushed, with his head down, at the solid wall, as a buffalo rushes blindly against an elephant.

He fell as if he were dead, the blood gushing from eyes, nose, and mouth, and lay senseless.

Lentulus thought he was killed, gazed on him for a moment tranquilly, and then said with a quiet laugh-

"He was a fool always-a rash fool!" Then turning to Cicero, he added-"By Hercules! this is slow work. I am exceeding hungry, and somewhat dry; and, as I fancy I shall eat nothing more to-day, nor drink, I would fain go to sleep."

"Would'st thou drink, Lentulus?" asked one of the Triumvirs.

"Would I not, had I wine?"

"Bring wine," said the magistrate to one of the Moorish slaves; who went out and returned in an instant with a large brazen platter supporting several goblets.

Lentulus seized one quickly, and swallowed it at a mouthful-there is a hot thirst in that last excitement-but as the flavor reached his palate, when the roughness of the harsh draught had pa.s.sed away, he flung the cup down scornfully and said,

"Finish it! Take this filthy taste from my lips! Let me rest!"

And with the words, he advanced to the Moors who stood beside the well-like aperture, and without a word suffered them to place the rope under his arms, and lower him into the pit.

Just as his head, however, was disappearing, he cast his eyes upward, and met the earnest gaze of the Consul.

"The voice of the people! the man of the people!" he cried sarcastically.

"Fool! fool! _they_ shall avenge me! Think upon me near Formiae!"

Was that spite, or a prophecy?

The eyes of the dying sometimes look far into futurity.

The haughty traitor was beyond the sight, before his words had ceased to ring in the ears of the spectators.

There was a small low sound heard from below-not a groan, not a struggle-but a rustle, a sob, a flutter-silence.

'So did(12) that Patrician, of the most n.o.ble house of the Cornelii, who once held consular dominion in Rome, meet his end, merited by his course of life, and his overt actions.'

Cethegus perished senseless, half dead by his own deed.

Caeparius died sullen; Gabinius weak and almost fainting; Statilius struggling and howling. All by a hard and slavish death, strangled by the base noose of a foreign hangman.

An hour afterward, their corpses were hurled down the Gemonian Stairs, among the shouts and acclamations of the drunken slavish rabble.

An hour afterward, Cicero stood on the rostrum, near the Libonian well-that rostrum whereon, at a later day Lentulus' prophecy was fulfilled-and called out, in a voice as solemn and almost as deep as thunder,

"THEY WERE!"

And the voice of the people yelled out its joy, because they _were_ no longer; and hailed their slayer the Savior and Father of his country.

A few years afterward, how did they not hail Anthony?

CHAPTER XV.

THE CAMP IN THE APPENNINES.

With that he gave his able horse the head.

HENRY IV.

There is a wild gorge in the very summit of the Appennines, not quite midway between Florence and Pistoia, the waters of which, shed in different directions, flow on the one hand tributaries to the Po, and on the other to the Arno, swelling the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean seas.

The mountains rise abruptly in bare crags, covered here and there by a low growth of myrtle and wild olives, on either hand this gorge, quite inaccessible to any large array of armed men, though capable of being traversed by solitary foresters or shepherds. Below, the hills fall downward in a succession of vast broken ridges, in places rocky and almost perpendicular, in places swelling into rounded knolls, feathered with dark rich forests of holm oak and chesnut.

In the highest part of this gorge, where it spreads out into a little plain, perched like the eyry of some ravenous bird of prey, the camp of Catiline was pitched, on the second evening after the execution of his comrades.

Selected with rare judgment, commanding all the lower country, and the descent on one hand into the Val d'Arno and thence to Rome, on the other into the plain of the Po and thence into Cisalpine Gaul, the whole of which was ripe for insurrection, that camp secured to him an advance upon the city, should his friends prove successful, or a retreat into regions where he could raise new levies in case of their failure.

A Roman camp was little less than a regular fortification, being formed mostly in an oblong square, with a broad ditch and earthen ramparts garnished by a stockade, with wooden towers at the gates, one of which pierced each side of the intrenchment.

And to such a degree of perfection and celerity had long experience and the most rigid discipline brought the legions, that it required an incredibly short time to prepare such a camp for any number of men; a thing which never was omitted to be done nightly even during the most arduous marches and in the face of an enemy.

Catiline was too able and too old a soldier to neglect such precaution under any circ.u.mstances; and a.s.suredly he would not have done so now, when the consul Antonius lay with two veteran legions within twenty miles distance in the low country east of Florence, while Quintus Metellus Celer, at the head of a yet larger force, was in the Picene district on his rear, and not so far off but he might have attempted to strike a blow at him.

His camp, capable of containing two full legions, the number of which he had completed, all free-born men and Roman citizens, for he had refused the slaves who flocked at first to his standard in great force, was perfectly defended, and provided with all the usual tents and divisions; so that every cohort, manipule, and century, nay every man, knew his own station.

The sun had just sunk beneath the horizon and the night watches had been set by sound of trumpets, the hors.e.m.e.n had been appointed for the rounds, and an outpost of light-armed soldiers pushed forward in front of all the gates.