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 cross 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!"