"It is impossible that he can have deserted the cause of the Holy Church," said Silverius, as he also entered.
"Impossible!" laughed Licinius. "What! are you mad, or am I? Has he not caused us to be confined in our houses? Has he not shut the gates, and taken the oaths of the mob for the barbarians?"
"Has he not," continued Cethegus, "caught the noble fathers of the city, three hundred in number, and kept them in the Curia, like so many mice in a trap; three hundred aristocratic mice?"
"He dares to mock us? Will you suffer that?" cried Licinius. And Scævola turned pale with anger.
"Well, and what would you have done had you been allowed to act?" asked the Prefect quietly, crossing his arms on his broad breast.
"What should we have done?" cried Licinius. "What we, and you with us, have a hundred times decided upon. As soon as the news of the tyrant's death had arrived, we should have killed all the Goths in the city, proclaimed a Republic, and chosen two consuls----"
"Of the names of Licinius and Scævola; that is the first thing. Well, and then? What then?"
"What then? Freedom would have conquered!"
"Folly would have conquered!" broke out Cethegus in a thundering voice, which startled his accusers. "Well for us that your hands were bound; you would have strangled Hope for ever. Look here, and thank me upon your knees!"
He took some records from another casket, and gave them to his astonished companions.