CHAPTER XVII.
TIDINGS FROM ROME.
Time and the tide wear through the longest day.
Shakspeare.
"At last, I have thee, Julia!"
Mighty indeed was the effort of the mind, which enabled that fair slight girl to bear up with an undaunted lip and serene eye against the presence of that atrocious villain; and hope, never-dying hope, was the spirit which nerved her to that effort.
It was strange, knowing as she did the character of that atrocious and bloodthirsty tyrant, that she should not have given way entirely to feminine despair and terror, or sought by tears and prayers to disarm his purpose.
But her high blood cried out from every vein and artery of her body; and she stood calm and sustained by conscious virtue, even in that extremity of peril; neither tempting assault by any display of coward weakness, nor provoking it by any show of defiance.
There is nothing, perhaps, so difficult to any one who is not a butcher or an executioner by trade, with sensibilities blunted by the force of habit, as to attack or injure any thing, which neither flies, nor resists, neither braves, nor trembles.
And Catiline himself, savage and brutal as he was, full of ungoverned impulse and unbridled passion, felt, though he knew not wherefore, this difficulty at this moment.