"By Hercules! I fancy not," said Paullus.
"Wherefore, I pray thee, not? Who knoweth? Perchance I go to pay my vows to Jupiter upon the capitol! perchance," he added with a deep sneer, "to salute our most eloquent and noble consul!"
A crimson flush shot instantly across the face and temples of Arvina, perceiving that he was tampered with, and sounded only; yet he replied calmly and with dignity, "Thither indeed, go I; but I knew not that thou wert in so much a friend of Cicero, as to go visit him."
"Men sometimes visit those who be not their friends," answered the other. "I never said he was a friend to me, or I to him. By the gods, no! I had lied else."
"But what was that," asked the youth, moved, by an inexplicable curiosity and excitement, to learn something more of the singular being with whom chance had brought him into contact, "which thou didst say but now concerning slaves?"
"That all these whom we see before us, and around us, and beneath us, are but a herd of slaves; gulled and vainglorious slaves!"
"The Roman people?" exclaimed Paullus, every tone of his voice, every feature of his fine countenance, expressing his unmitigated horror and astonishment. "The great, unconquered Roman people; the lords of earth and sea, from frosty Caucasus to the twin rocks of Hercules; the tramplers on the necks of kings; the arbiters of the whole world! The Roman people, slaves?"
"Most abject and most wretched!"
"To whom then?" cried the young man, much excited, "to whom am I, art thou, a slave? For we are also of the Roman people?"
"The Roman people, and thou, as one of them, and I, Paullus Cæcilius, are slaves one and all; abject and base and spirit-fallen slaves, lacking the courage even to spurn against our fetters, to the proud tyrannous rich aristocracy."