op for that? Ho! bear him hence, we will attend his funeral,
when it shall be soever; and we will drink to his memory to-day. What
comes next, comrades?"

Arvina, it is true, was for a moment both shocked and disgusted at the
heartless and unfeeling tone; but few if any of the others evinced the
like tenderness; for it must be remembered, in the first place, that the
Romans, inured to sights of blood and torture daily in the gladiatorial
fights of the arena, were callous to human suffering, and careless of
human life at all times; and, in the second, that Stoicism was the
predominant affectation of the day, not only among the rude and coarse,
but among the best and most virtuous citizens of the republic. Few,
therefore, left the ground, when the corpse, decently enveloped in the
toga he had worn when living, was borne homewards; except the involuntary
homicide, who could not even at that day in decency remain, and a few of
his most intimate associates, who covering their faces in the lappets of
their gowns, followed the bearers in stern and silent sorrow.

Scarcely then had the sad procession threaded the marble archway, before
Catiline again asked loudly and imperiously,

"What is to be the next, I pray you? are we to sit here like old women by
their firesides, croaking and whimpering till dinner time?"

"No! by the gods," cried Aurelius, "we have a race to come off, which I
propose to win. Fuscus Aristius here, and I--we will start instantly, if no
one else has the ground."

"Away with you then," answered the other; "come sit by me, Arvina, I would
say a word with you."

Giving his horse to one of his grooms, the young man followed him without
answer; for although it is true that Catiline was at this time a marked
man and of no favorable reputation, yet squeamishness in the choice of
associates was never a characteristic of the Romans; and persons, the
known perpetrators of the most atrocious crimes, so long as they were
unconvicted, mingled on terms of equality, unshunned by any, except the
gravest and most rigid censors. Arvina, too, was very young; and very
young men are often fascinated, as it were, by great reputations, even of
great criminals, with a passionate desire to see them more closely, and
observe the stuff they are made of. So that, in fact, Catiline being
looked upon in those days much as a desperate gambler, a celebrated
duellist, or a famous seducer of our own time, whom no one shuns though
eve