"Ha! this is indeed news!" cried Caius. "What will befall Lentulus and the rest? Do men know anything!"
"Death!" answered Arvina gravely.
"Death! art thou certain? A Prætor, a consular of Rome! and all the others Senators! Death! Paullus?"
"Death!" replied the other still more solemnly, than before. "Yet methinks! that rather should be a boon, than the fit penalty of such guilt! But where have you been, that you are ignorant of all this, and whom have you there?"
Caius Fulvius shook his head sorrowfully, and a deep groan burst from the lips of the muffled man, a groan of rage mingled with hate and terror.
"I will tell thee, Arvina," said the young man, after a moment's pause, during which Paullus had been gazing with a singular, and even to himself incomprehensible, emotion at the captive horseman. "We have been sent to fetch him back," and he pointed to his wretched cousin, "as he fled to join Catiline. We overtook him nigh to Volsinii."
"Who—who—" exclaimed Arvina in a terrible hoarse voice—"By all the Gods! who is he?—"
"Aulus—"
"Ha! villain! villain! He shall die by my hand!" [pg 128]burst from Arvina's lips with a stifled cry, and drawing his sword as he spoke, he made toward him.
But Caius Fulvius, and several others of the clients threw themselves into the way, and the former said quietly but very firmly, "No—no, my Paullus, that must not be. His life is devoted to a baser doom; nor must his blood be shed by a hand so noble! But wherefore—Ha!" he exclaimed, interrupting himself in mid speech. "Ha! Julia, I remember—I remember—would to the Gods I could have rescued her."