oss with you all! Is this Animula or Rome, where rude clowns do not
recognize their betters?" Then, for the first time, perceiving
Sergius: "Greeting to you, my Lucius! May the gods favour you better
than they have the Republic this day."

At that moment, a big, hulking fellow thrust himself forward in the
path of the advancing patrician and hiccoughed out:--

"May you meet with a plague, master! Truly there are to be no betters
or worsers in Rome--now that the noble Varro is consul and--"

The staff of Torquatus felled him to the ground, where he lay
shuddering and drawing up his legs, while a yell of rage and menace
broke from the crowd. Scarcely changing a line in his grim face, the
old man calmly trussed the folds of his toga about his left arm, freed
his right more fully, and drew a stylus of such size as to suggest a
dagger much more than an instrument for writing: such a weapon as was
born of the election brawls of earlier days, innocent under the law,
yet equally efficient as pen or sword.

Daunted at his aspect, the foremost assailants held back.

"Are there not more vinegar drinkers that wish to learn from an old
Roman the manners of old Rome?" asked Torquatus, sneeringly.

How the fight, once begun, would have ended seemed hardly uncertain,
for the crowd filled all the neighbouring streets: half were drunk, and
nearly half were provided with arms of some sort, many of them such as
were warranted by no pretext of law, save the knowledge that Varro was
consul, and the belief that he would protect his adherents in whatever
breach might please them. The dangerous front of Torquatus and his
company might have sufficed to check those who would have to lead a
rush, but they, unfortunately, had the least to say on the subject of
giving battle. Already the mobs, pouring in from the side streets at
the first scent of a brawl, were pushing the forlorn hope, all
unwilling, to its fate; three or four had already gone down with broken
heads, and a freedman of Torquatus had been stabbed in the side, when,
above the tumult, rose a voice crying:--

"Make way for the Consul, Paullus! Way! way!"

The matter, truly, was becoming serious, thought the outskirts of the
mob--all of them who could hear the shout. A brush with the fiercest,
the most hated, the most hating aristocrat that had been borne behind
the fasces for many a year, would mean punishment with a heavy hand.
The pressure was at once relieved, and th