More than once had his mortal enemy been almost within arm's length of him; their eyes had glared mutual hatred on each other, their blades had crossed once, but still the throng and rush of combatants and flyers had forced them asunder; and now the strife was almost ended, the tide of slaughter had receded toward the rebel camp, the ramparts of which the legionaries were already storming.
Weary and out of breath and disappointed, Paullus Arvina halted alone, among piles of the dying and the dead, with groans and imprecations in his ears, and bitterness and vexation at his heart.
His comrades had rushed away on the track of the retreating rebels; and their shouts, as they stormed the palisades, reached him, but failed to awake any respondent note of triumph in his spirit.
He had no share in the vulgar victory, he cared not to strike down and slaughter the commoners of the rebellion. Catiline was the quarry at which he flew, and with no game less noble could he rest contented. Ca[pg 232]tiline, it would seem, had escaped him for the moment; and he stood leaning on his red sword, doubtful.
Instinctively he felt assured that his enemy had not retreated. Almost he feared that his death had crowned some other hand with glory.
When suddenly, a mighty clatter arose in the rear, toward the Roman camp, and turning swiftly toward the sound, he perceived a desperate knot of rebels still charging frantically onward, although surrounded by thrice their numbers of inveterate and ruthless victors.
"By the Gods! he is there!" and with the speed of the hunted deer, he rushed toward the spot, bounding in desperate haste over the dying and the dead, blaspheming or unconscious.
He reached the meleè. He dashed headlong into the thick of it. The Romans were giving way before the fury of a gory madman, as he seemed, who bore down all that met him at the sword's point.
"Catiline! Catiline!" and at the cry, the boldest of the consular army recoiled. "Ho!—Romans! Ho! who will slay Sergius Catiline? Ho! Romans! Ho! His head is worth the winning! Who will slay Sergius Catiline?"
And, still at every shout, he struck down, and stabbed, and maimed, and trampled, even amid defeat and ruin victorious, unsubdued, a terror to his victors.