old, and the brightness shed itself over the steadfast
countenance, not of Caesar the Proconsul, but of Caesar the Insurgent.

The Rubicon was crossed!

Chapter XVII

The Profitable Career of Gabinius

Very wretched had been the remnants of Dumnorix's band of gladiators,
when nightfall had covered them from pursuit by the enraged
Praenestians. And for some days the defeated assassins led a desperate
struggle for existence on the uplands above the Latin plain. Then,
when the hue and cry aroused by their mad exploit had died away,
Dumnorix was able to reorganize his men into a regular horde of
banditti. In the sheltered valleys of the upper Apennines they found
moderately safe and comfortable fastnesses, and soon around them
gathered a number of unattached highwaymen, who sought protection and
profit in allying themselves with the band led by the redoubtable
lanista. But if Dumnorix was the right arm of this noble company,
Publius Gabinius was its head. The Roman had sorely missed the loss of
the thousand and one luxuries that made his former life worth living.
But, as has been said, he had become sated with almost every current
amusement and vice; and when the freshness of the physical hardships
of his new career was over, he discovered that he had just begun to
taste joys of which he would not soon grow weary.

And so for a while the bandits ranged over the mountains, infested the
roads, stopped travellers to ease them of their purses, or even dashed
down on outlying country houses, which they plundered, and left
burning as beacons of their handiwork. Even this occupation after a
time, however, grew monotonous to Gabinius. To be sure, a goodly pile
of money was accumulating in the hut where he and Dumnorix, his
fellow-leader, made their headquarters; and the bandits carried away
with them to their stronghold a number of slave and peasant girls, who
aided to make the camp the scene of enough riot and orgy to satisfy
the most graceless; but Gabinius had higher ambitions than these. He
could not spend the gold on dinner parties, or bronze statuettes; and
the maidens picked up in the country made a poor contrast to his city
sweethearts. Gabinius was planning a great piece of _finesse_. He had
not forgotten Fabia; least of all had he forgotten how he had had her
as it were in his very arms, and let her vanish from him as though she
had been a "shade" of thin air. If he must be a bandit, he would be an
original