ed him to pay a
heavy fine, and to be imprisoned; and he contrived also to expose him,
in the course of the proceedings, to the mob in the Forum, who were
always ready to espouse Caesar's cause, and who, on this occasion, beat
Vettius so unmercifully, that he barely escaped with his life. The
magistrate, too, was thrown into prison for having dared to take an
information against a superior officer.

[Sidenote: Caesar's embarrassment.]
[Sidenote: Spain is assigned to him.]

At last Caesar became so much involved in debt, through the boundless
extravagance of his expenditures, that something must be done to
replenish his exhausted finances. He had, however, by this time, risen
so high in official influence and power, that he succeeded in having
Spain assigned to him as his province, and he began to make preparations
to proceed to it. His creditors, however, interposed, unwilling to let
him go without giving them security. In this dilemma, Caesar succeeded
in making an arrangement with Crassus, who has already been spoken of as
a man of unbounded wealth and great ambition, but not possessed of any
considerable degree of intellectual power. Crassus consented to give the
necessary security, with an understanding that Caesar was to repay him
by exerting his political influence in his favor. So soon as this
arrangement was made, Caesar set off in a sudden and private manner, as
if he expected that otherwise some new difficulty would intervene.

[Sidenote: The Swiss hamlet.]

He went to Spain by land, passing through Switzerland on the way. He
stopped with his attendants one night at a very insignificant village of
shepherds' huts among the mountains. Struck with the poverty and
worthlessness of all they saw in this wretched hamlet, Caesar's friends
were wondering whether the jealousy, rivalry, and ambition which reigned
among men every where else in the world could find any footing there,
when Caesar told them that, for his part, he should rather choose to be
first in such a village as that than the second at Rome. The story has
been repeated a thousand times, and told to every successive generation
now for nearly twenty centuries, as an illustration of the peculiar type
and character of the ambition which controls such a soul as that
of Caesar.

[Sidenote: Caesar's ambition.]

Caesar was very successful in the administration of his province; that
is to say, he returned in a short time with considerable military glory,