"Why, hath he not confessed it?" asked the old man, who had spoken so many times before; and who had lingered with Fulvius Flaccus, and a few others of the crowd. "It is true."
"Who art thou?" asked the old Patrician, a terrible suspicion crossing his mind.
"The father of that daughter, whom thy son forcibly dishonored!"
"Enter!" replied the senator, throwing the door, in front of which he stood, wide open, "thou shalt have justice!"
Then, casting a glance full of sad but resolute determination upon the culprit, all whose audacity had passed away, he said in a graver tone,
"Enter thou likewise; thou shalt have punishment!"
"Punishment!" answered the proud youth, his eye flashing, "Punishment! and from whom?"
"Punishment from thy father! wilt thou question it? Punishment, even unto death, if thou shalt be found worthy to die!—the law is not dead, if it have slept awhile! Enter!"
He dared not to reply—he dared not to refuse. Slow, sullen, and crest-fallen, he crossed his father's threshhold; but, as he did so, he glared terribly on Paullus, and shook his hand at him, and cried in tones of deadly hatred,
"This is thy doing! curses—curses upon thee! thou shalt rue it!"