ons and
confiscations and abolition of debt? Will there be any peace, any
happiness in life, so long as we call ourselves freemen, yet endure
the chains of a despotism worse than that of the Parthians?"

"Ah! amice!" said Caesar, twisting the long limp grass, "every enemy is
a tyrant, if he has the upper hand. Consider, what will the war be?
Blood, the blood of the noblest Romans! The overturning of
time-honoured institutions! A shock that will make the world to
tremble, kings be laid low, cities annihilated! East, west, north,
south--all involved--so great has our Roman world become!"

"And are there not wrongs, abuses, Imperator, which cry for vengeance
and for righting?" replied Drusus, vehemently. "Since the fall of
Carthage, have not the fears of Scipio AEmilianus almost come true:
Troy has fallen, Carthage has fallen; has not Rome almost fallen,
fallen not by the might of her enemies, but by the decay of her
morals, the degeneracy of her statesmen? What is the name of liberty,
without the semblance! Is it liberty for a few mighty families to
enrich themselves, while the Republic groans? Is it liberty for the
law courts to have their price, for the provinces to be the farms of a
handful of nobles?"

Caesar shook his head.

"You do not know what you say. This is no moment for declamation.
Every man has his own life to live, his own death to die. Our
intellects cannot assure us of any consciousness the instant that
breath has left our bodies. It is then as if we had never hoped, had
never feared; it is rest, peace. Quintus Drusus, I have dared many
things in my life. I defied Sulla; it was boyish impetuosity. I took
the unpopular and perilous side when Catilina's confederates were sent
to their deaths; it was the ardour of a young politician. I defied the
rage of the Senate, while I was praetor; still more hot madness. I
faced death a thousand times in Gaul, against the Nervii, in the
campaign with Vercingetorix; all this was the mere courage of the
common soldier. But it is not of death I am afraid; be it death on the
field of battle, or death at the hands of the executioner, should I
fall into the power of my enemies, I fear myself.

"You ask me to explain?" went on the general, without pausing for a
question. "Hearken! I am a man, you are a man, our enemies are men. I
have slain a hundred thousand men in Gaul. Cruel? No, for had they
lived the great designs which the deity wills to accomplish in that
countr