triotism, to wish to
overthrow the great oligarchy of noble families, who by their
federated influence had pulled the wires to every electoral assembly,
so that hardly a man not of their own coterie had been elected to high
office for many a long year; while the officials themselves had grown
full and wanton on the revenues wrung from the score of unfortunate
provinces.

The feeling against the Caesarians was very bitter in the city. Caesar
had always been the friend and darling of the populace; but, now that
his star seemed setting, hardly a voice was raised, save to cry up the
patriotism and determination of the consuls and Pompeius Magnus.
Soldiers of the latter's legions were everywhere. The Senate was to
convene the afternoon of the seventh, in the Curia of Pompeius, in the
Campus Martius. Lentulus Crus was dragging forth every obscure
senator, every retired politician, whose feet almost touched the
grave, to swell his majority. All knew that the tribunes' vetoes were
to be set aside, and arbitrary power decreed to the consuls. Drusus
began to realize that the personal peril was pressing.

"Won't his head look pretty for the crows to pick at?" commented
Marcus Laeca to a friend, as the two swept past Drusus on the street.
The Livian heard the loudly muttered words and trembled. It was easy
to laud the Decii who calmly sacrificed their lives for the Republic,
and many another martyr to patriotism; it was quite another thing to
feel the mortal fear of death coursing in one's veins, to reflect that
soon perhaps the dogs might be tearing this body which guarded that
strange thing one calls self; to reflect that all which soon will be
left of one is a bleaching skull, fixed high in some public place, at
which the heartless mob would point and gibber, saying, "That is the
head of Quintus Livius Drusus, the rebel!"

Drusus wandered on--on to the only place in Rome where he could gain
the moral courage to carry him undaunted through that which was before
him--to the Atrium of Vesta. He entered the house of the Vestals and
sent for his aunt. Fabia came quickly enough, for her heart had been
with her nephew all these days that tried men's souls. The noble woman
put her arms around the youth--for he was still hardly more--and
pressed him to her breast.

"Aunt Fabia," said Drusus, growing very weak and pale, now that he
felt her warm, loving caress, "do you know that in two or three days
you will have as nephew a proscrib