"Flaminius fought."
"May Jupiter avert the omen! and you will forgive me, my father, if I bid you a too hasty farewell? I had not determined to go so soon—but it is best. And there is preparation to be made."
Torquatus followed him silently to the door, and watched the light of his torches till it died out below the hill; then he shook his head with a puzzled, sad expression.
"Yes, truly," he said; "let the omen be lacking."
XIII.
THE RED FLAG.
The red flag fluttered in the breeze above the tent of Varro.
Months had come and gone since the plebeians had triumphed in the Field of Mars; months of weary lying in camp, months of anxious watching, months of marches and countermarches. Contrary to the expectations of Sergius, neither of the new consuls had gone straight to the legions, and the pro-consuls, Servilius and Regulus, remained in command. Paullus had busied himself in preparing for the coming spring, levying new men and new legions, and directing from the city a policy not unlike that of Fabius; while Varro, on the other hand, as if maddened by his sudden elevation, rushed from Senate House to Forum and from Forum to every corner where a mob could congregate; everywhere rolling his eyes and waving his hands, now shrieking frantic denunciations against the selfish, the criminal, the traitorous nobles who had brought the war to Italy and sustained it there by their wicked machinations and contemptible cowardice; now congratulating his hearers that the people had at last taken the conspirators by the throat and had elected a fearless consul, an incorruptible consul, an able consul, one who would soon show the world that there were men outside of the three tribes. Then he would fall to mapping out his campaign—a different plan for each cluster of gaping listeners, but each ending in such a slaughter of invaders as Italy had never seen, and a picture of the long triumph winding up the Sacred Way, of Hannibal disappearing forever within the yawning jaws of the Tullianum. At times, when his imagination ran riot most, he went so far as to depict with what luxuriance the corn would grow on the farm of that happy man whose land should be selected by the great consul, the plebeian consul, the consul Varro, for his slaughter of the enemies of the Roman people.
To these harangues Paullus and the nobles listened in wonder and disgust—even in terror; and when, at length, the consuls set out to take command of the greatest army Rome had ever put into the field, the story was passed from mouth to mouth of how Fabius had spoken with Paullus and warned him that he must now do battle against two commanders: Hannibal and his own colleague; and of how Paullus had answered in words that told more of foreboding than of hope.