The Roman Traitor Volume Ii Part 35

Unsupplied with magazines, or any regular supply of provisions, his army like a flight of locusts had stripped the country bare at every halting place, and that wild hill country had few resources, even when shorn by the licentious band of his desperadoes, upon which to support an army. The consequence, therefore, of his incessant hurrying to and fro, was that the valleys of the mountain chain which he had made the theatre of his campaign, were now utterly exhausted; that his beasts of burden were broken down and foundered; and that the line of his march might be traced by the carca.s.ses of mules and horses which had given out by the wayside, and by the flights of carrion birds which hovered in clouds about his rear, prescient of the coming carnage.

His first attempt was to elude Metellus Celer, who had marched down from the Picene district on the Adriatic sea, with great rapidity, and taken post at the foot of the mountains, on the head waters of the streams which flow down into the great plain of the Po.

In this attempt he had been frustrated by the ability of the officer who was opposed to him, who had raised no less than three legions fully equipped for war.

By him every movement of the conspirator was antic.i.p.ated, and met by some corresponding measure, which rendered it abortive. Nor was it, any longer, difficult for him to penetrate the designs of Catiline, since the peasantry and mountaineers, who had throughout that district been favorable to the conspiracy in the first instance, and who were prepared to favor any design which promised to deliver them from inexorable taxation, had been by this time so unmercifully plundered and hara.s.sed by that banditti, that they were now as willing to betray Catiline to the Romans, as they had been desirous before of giving the Romans into his hands at disadvantage.

Fully aware of all these facts, and knowing farther that Antonius had now come up so close to his rear, with a large army, that he was in imminent danger of being surrounded and taken between two fires, the desperate traitor suddenly took the boldest and perhaps the wisest measure.

Wheeling directly round he turned his back toward Gaul, whither he had been marching, and set his face toward the city. Then making three great forced marches he came upon the army of Antonius, as it was in column of march, among the heights above Pistoria, and had there been daylight for the attack when the heads of the consul's cohorts were discovered, it is possible that he might have forced him to fight at disadvantage, and even defeated him.

In that case there would have been no force capable of opposing him on that side Rome, and every probability would have been in favor of his making himself master of the city, a success which would have gone far to insure his triumph.

It was late in the evening, however, when the hostile armies came into presence, each of the other, and on that account, and, perhaps, for another and stronger reason, Catiline determined on foregoing the advantages of a surprise.

Caius Antonius, the consul in command, it must be remembered, had been one of the original confederates in Catiline's first scheme of ma.s.sacre and conflagration, which had been defeated by the unexpected death of Curius Piso.

Detached from the conspiracy only by Cicero's rare skill, and disinterested cession to him of the rich province of Macedonia, Antonius might therefore justly be supposed unlikely to urge matters to extremities against his quondam comrades; and it was probably in no small degree on this account that Catiline had resolved on trying the chances of battle rather against an old friend, than against an enemy so fixed, and of so resolute patrician principles as Metellus Celer.

He thought, moreover, that it was just within the calculation of chances that Antonius might either purposely mismanuvre, so as to allow him to descend upon Rome without a battle, or adopt such tactics as should give him a victory.

He halted his army, therefore, in a little gorge of the hills opening out upon a level plain, flanked on the left by the steep acclivities of the mountain, which towered in that direction, ridge above ridge, inaccessible, and on the right by a rugged and rocky spur, jutting out from the same ridge, by which his line of battle would be rendered entirely una.s.sailable on the flanks and rear.

In this wild spot, amid huge gray rocks, and hanging woods of ancient chesnuts and wild olive, as gray and h.o.a.ry as the stones among which they grew, he had pitched his camp, and now lay awaiting in grim antic.i.p.ation what the morrow should bring forth; while, opposite to his front, on a lower plateau of the same eminence, the great army of the consul might be descried, with its regular entrenchments and superb array of tents, its forests of gleaming spears, and its innumerable ensigns, glancing and waving in the cold wintry moonshine.

The mind of the traitor was darker and more gloomy than its wont. He had supped with his officers, Manlius and a n.o.bleman of Faesulae, whose name the historian has not recorded, who held the third rank in the rebel army, but their fare had been meagre and insipid, their wines the thin vintage of that hill country; a little attempt at festivity had been made, but it had failed altogether; the spirits of the men, although undaunted and prepared to dare the utmost, lacked all that fiery and enthusiastic ardor, which kindles patriot b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a flame so pure and pervading, on the eve of the most desperate encounters.

Enemies of their country, enemies almost of mankind, these desperadoes were prepared to fight desperately, to fight unto the death, because to win was their only salvation, and, if defeated, death their only refuge.

But for them there was no grand heart-elevating spur to action, no fame to be won, no deathless name to be purchased-their names deathless already, as they knew too well, through black infamy!-no grateful country's praises, to be gained cheaply by a soldier's death!-no! there were none of these things.

All their excitements were temporal, sensual, earthy. The hope to conquer, the l.u.s.t to bask in the sunshine of power, the desire to revel at ease in boundless luxury and riot.

And against these, the rewards of victory, what were the penalties of defeat-death, infamy, the hatred and the scorn of ages.

The wicked have no friends. Never, perhaps, was this fact exemplified more clearly than on that battle eve. Community of guilt, indeed, bound those vicious souls together-community of interests, of fears, of perils, held them in league-yet, feeling as they did feel that their sole chance of safety lay in the maintenance of that confederation, each looked with evil eyes upon his neighbor, each almost hated the others, accusing them internally of having drawn them into their present perilous peril, of having failed at need, or of being swayed by selfish motives only.

So little truth there is in the principle, which Catiline had set forth in his first address to his banded parricides, "that the community of desires and dislikes const.i.tutes, in one word, true friendship!"-

And now so darkly did their destiny lower on those depraved and ruined spirits, that even their recklessness, that last light which emanates from crime in despair, had burned out, and the furies of conscience,-that conscience which they had so often stifled, so often laughed to scorn, so often drowned with riot and debauch, so often silenced by fierce sophistry-now hunted them, harpies of the soul, worse than the fabulous Eumenides of parricide Orestes.

The gloomy meal was ended; the parties separated, all of them, as it would seem, relieved by the termination of those mock festivities which, while they brought no gayity to the heart, imposed a necessity of seeming mirthful and at ease, when they were in truth disturbed by dark thoughts of the past, and terrible forebodings of the future.

As soon as his guests had departed and the traitor was left alone, he arose from his seat, according to his custom, and began to pace the room with vehement and rapid strides, gesticulating wildly, and muttering sentences, the terrible oaths and blasphemies of which were alone audible.

Just at this time a prolonged flourish of trumpets from without, announced the changing of the watch. It was nine o'clock. "Ha! the third hour!"

already, he exclaimed, starting as he heard the wild blast, "and Chaerea not yet returned from Antonius. Can it be that the dog freedman has played me false, or can Antonius have seized him as a hostage?-I will go forth,"

he added, after a short pause, "I will go forth, and observe the night."

And throwing a large cloak over his armor, and putting a broad-brimmed felt hat upon his head, in lieu of the high crested helmet, he sallied out into the camp, carrying in addition to his sword a short ma.s.sive javelin in his right hand.

The night was extremely dark and murky. The moon had not yet risen, and but for the camp-fires of the two armies, it would have been impossible to walk any distance without the aid of a torch or lantern. A faint lurid light was dispersed from these, however, over the whole sky, and thence was reflected weakly on the rugged and broken ground which lay between the entrenched lines of the two hosts.

For a while, concealed entirely by his disguise, Catiline wandered through the long streets of tents, listening to the conversation of the soldiers about the watch-fires, their strange superst.i.tious legends, and old traditionary songs; and, to say truth, the heart of that desperate man was somewhat lightened by his discovery that the spirits of the men were alert and eager for the battle, their temper keen and courageous, their confidence in the prowess and ability of their chief unbounded.

"He is the best soldier, since the days of Sylla," said one gray-headed veteran, whose face was scarred by the Pontic scymetars of Mithridates.

"He is a better soldier in the field, than ever Sylla was, by Hercules!"

replied another.

"Aye! in the field! Sylla, I have heard say, rarely unsheathed his sword, and never led his men to hand and hand encounter," interposed a younger man, than the old colonists to whom he spoke.

"It is the head to plan, not the hand to execute, that makes the great captain. Caius, or Marcus, t.i.tus or Tullus, can any one of them strike home as far, perhaps farther, than your Syllas or your Catilines."

"By Mars! I much doubt it!" cried another. "I would back Catiline with sword and buckler against the stoutest and the deftest gladiator that ever wielded blade. He is as active and as strong as a Libyan tiger."

"Aye! and as merciless."

"May the foe find him so to-morrow!"

"To-morrow, by the G.o.ds! I wish it were to-morrow. It is cold work this, whereas, to-morrow night, I promise you, we shall be ransacking Antonius'

camp, with store of choice wines, and rare viands."

"But who shall live to share them is another question."

"One which concerns not those who win."

"And by the G.o.d of Battles! we will do that to-morrow, let who may fall asleep, and who may keep awake to tell of it."

"A sound sleep to the slumberers, a merry rouse to the quick boys, who shall keep waking!" shouted another, and the cups were brimmed, and quaffed amid a storm of loud tumultuous cheering.

Under cover of this tumult, Catiline withdrew from the neighborhood, into which he had intruded with the stealthy pace of the beast to which the soldiers had compared him; and as he retired, he muttered to himself-"They are in the right frame of mind-of the right stuff to win-and yet-and yet-"

he paused, and shook his head gloomily, as if he dared not trust his own lips to complete the sentence he had thus begun.

A moment afterward he exclaimed-"But Chaerea! but Chaerea! how long the villain tarries! By heaven! I will go forth and meet him."

And suiting the action to the word, he walked rapidly down the Quintana or central way to the Praetorian gate, there giving the word to the night-watch in a whisper, and showing his grim face to the half-astonished sentinel on duty, he pa.s.sed out of the lines, alone and unguarded.

After advancing a few paces, he was challenged again by the pickets of the velites, who were thrust out in advance of the gates, and again giving the word was suffered to pa.s.s on, and now stood beyond the farthest outpost of his army.

Cautiously and silently, but with a swift step and determined air, he now advanced directly toward the front of the Roman entrenchments, which lay at a little more than a mile's distance from his own lines, and ere long reached a knoll or hillock which would by daylight have commanded a complete view of the whole area of the consul's camp, not being much out of a sling's cast from the ramparts.

The camp of the consul lay on the slope of a hill, so that the rear was considerably higher than the front; Catiline's eye, as he stood on that little eminence, could therefore clearly discern all the different streets and divisions of the camp, by the long lines of lamps and torches which blazed along the several avenues, and he gazed anxiously and long, at that strange silent picture.

With the exception of a slight clash and clang heard at times on the walls, where the skirmishers were going on their rounds, and the neigh of some restless charger, there was nothing that should have indicated to the ear that nearly twenty thousand men were sleeping among those tented lines of light-sleeping how many of them their last natural slumber.

No thoughts of that kind, however, intruded on the mind of the desperado.

Careless of human life, reckless of human suffering, he gazed only with his enquiring glance of profound penetration, hoping to espy something, whereby he might learn the fate-not of his messenger, that was to him a matter of supreme indifference-but of his message to Antonius.