ss. On this habit the conspirators counted. Two of their
number, one of them a knight, the other a senator, presented themselves
at his door shortly after sunrise on the seventh of November. They
reckoned on finding him, not in the great hall of his mansion,
surrounded by friends and dependents, but in his bed-chamber. But the
consul had received warning of their coming, and they were refused
admittance. The next day he called a meeting of the Senate in the temple
of Jupiter the Stayer, which was supposed to be the safest place where
they could assemble.

To this meeting Catiline, a member in right of having filled high
offices of state, himself ventured to come. A tall, stalwart man,
manifestly of great power of body and mind, but with a face pale and
wasted by excess, and his eyes haggard and bloodshot, he sat alone in
the midst of a crowded house. No man had greeted him when he entered,
and when he took his place on the benches allotted to senators who had
filled the office of consul, all shrank from him. Then Cicero rose in
his place. He turned directly and addressed his adversary. "How long,
Catiline," he cried, "will you abuse our patience?" How had he dared to
come to that meeting? Was it not enough for him to know how all the city
was on its guard against him; how his fellow-senators shrank from him as
men shrink from a pestilence? If he was still alive, he owed it to the
forbearance of those against whom he plotted; and this forbearance would
last so long, and so long only, as to allow every one to be convinced of
his guilt. For the present, he was suffered to live, but to live guarded
and watched and incapable of mischief. Then the speaker related every
detail of the conspiracy. He knew not only every thing that the
accomplices had intended to do, but the very days that had been fixed
for doing it. Overwhelmed by this knowledge of his plans, Catiline
scarcely attempted a defense. He said in a humble voice, "Do not think,
Fathers, that I, a noble of Rome, I who have done myself, whose
ancestors have done much good to this city, wish to see it in ruins,
while this consul, a mere lodger in the place, would save it." He would
have said more, but the whole assembly burst into cries of "Traitor!
Traitor!" and drowned his voice. "My enemies," he cried, "are driving
me to destruction. But look! if you set my house on fire, I will put it
out with a general ruin." And he rushed out of the Senate.

Nothing, he saw, coul