y spar, whence the large gouts plashed heavily on the
damp pavement; the walls were covered with green slimy mould; the
atmosphere was close and foetid, and so heavy that the huge waxen torches,
four of which stood in rusty iron candelabra, on a large slab of granite,
burned dim and blue, casting a faint and ghastly light on lineaments so
grim and truculent, or so unnaturally excited by the dominion of all
hellish passions, that they had little need of anything extraneous to
render them most hideous and appalling. There were some twenty-five men
present, variously clad indeed, and of all ages, but evidently--though many
had endeavoured to disguise the fact by poor and sordid garments--all of
the higher ranks.

Six or eight were among them, who feared not, nor were ashamed to appear
there in the full splendor of their distinctive garb as Senators,
prominent among whom was the most rash and furious of them all, Cethegus.

He, at the moment when the arch-conspirator, accompanied by Laeca and the
rest of those who had admitted him, entered the vault, was speaking with
much energy and even fierceness of manner to three or four who stood apart
a little from the rest with their backs to the door, listening with
knitted brows, clenched hands, and lips compressed and bloodless, to his
tremendous imprecations launched at the heads of all who were for any,
even the least, delay in the accomplishment of their dread scheme of
slaughter.

One among them was a large stately looking personage, somewhat inclined to
corpulence, but showing many a sign of giant strength, and vigor
unimpaired by years or habit. His head was large but well shaped, with a
broad and massive forehead, and an eye keen as the eagle's when soaring in
his pride of place. His nose was prominent, but rather aquiline than
Roman. His mouth, wide and thick-lipped, with square and fleshy jaws, was
the worst feature in his face, and indicative of indulged sensuality and
fierceness, if not of cruelty combined with the excess of pride.

This man wore the plain toga and white tunic of a private citizen; but
never did plebeian eye and lip flash with such concentrated haughtiness,
curl with so fell a sneer, as those of that fallen consular, of that
degraded senator, the haughtiest and most ambitious of a race never
deficient in those qualities, he who, drunk with despairing pride, and
deceived to his ruin by the double-tongued Sibylline prophecies, aspired
to be that third