CHAPTER XIII.
THE DOOM.
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not striving time allowed.
Hamlet.
The nones[11] of November were perilous indeed to Rome.
The conspirators, arrested two days previously, and fully convicted on the evidence of the Gaulish ambassadors, of Titus Volturcius of Crotona, and of Lucius Tarquinius,—convicted on the evidence of their own letters—and lastly convicted by their own admissions, were yet uncondemned and in free custody, as it was termed; under the charge of certain senators and magistrates, whose zeal for the republic was undoubted.
There was still in the city a considerable mass of men, turbulent, disaffected, ripe for tumult—there was still in the Senate a large party, not indeed favorable to the plot, but far from being unfavorable to the plotters,—Catiline was at the head of a power which had increased already to nearly the force of two legions, and was in full march upon Rome.