noble opponents of Varro were rejected, and
the word went out that, of their enemies, the people would have Paullus
and him alone.

XII.

BRAWLINGS.

More sick at heart, as he grew stronger in body, Sergius returned from
the final voting in the Field of Mars. For some reason the popular
party, sated with triumph, had permitted the election, as praetors, of
good men who had experience in military affairs; perhaps that these
might, together with Paullus, make surer the victory that was to
redound to the honour of the darling of the mob and proclaim to all the
Roman world the superiority of the butcher, Varro, over Fabius, the
well-fathered.

As Sergius was borne along toward the Palatine district, he found the
streets crowded with a populace he had hardly known to exist in the
city. Down from the lofty tenements of the Aicus, up from the slums of
the Suburra, the Gate of the Three Folds, and the Etruscan Street they
poured, drunk with joy and with hatred of all men who wore white togas
and had money to lend or lands to till. At each corner a denser throng
was gathered around jugglers, tumblers, wrestlers that writhed over the
road-way, actors who danced Etruscan pantomimes and carried their
make-up in little bags slung around their necks, singers of medleys,
and would-be popular poets who spouted coarse epigrams and ribald
satires levelled at the thieving, the effeminate, the adulterous
patricians who thought to rule Rome and had named an Aemilius Paullus
to stand beside and check the generous, the fearless, the incorruptible
Varro. Threatening looks and words were cast at Sergius and the
company of freedmen and clients that surrounded him, until he was not
ill-pleased to see the escort of another noble issue from a side street
and beat its way to where the exhausted bearers had set down the
tribune's litter, pausing to gain breath before attempting to push on
farther. When, however, he recognized in the sturdy old man who strode
along in the midst of the new company, no more distant acquaintance
than the father of Marcia, he was conscious of a strong revulsion.
Better the continued buffeting with an obstreperous mob than the
embarrassments he foresaw in such a rencontre; but it was too late to
avoid it: the interests and perils of the two parties were too nearly
identical, and he heard the gruff voice of his old friend crying out:--

"Back, exercisers of the whip! Back, colonizers of chains! To the
cr