It was late in the evening already, and the streets were rapidly growing dark; yet there were many passengers abroad, more perhaps than was usual at that hour; and now and then, a little group would form about one or the other of the windows, cheapening and purchasing provisions, and chatting for a few minutes, after their business was finished, with their gossips.
These groups were composed altogether of the lowest order of the free citizens of Rome, artizans, and small shop keepers, and here and there a woman of low origin, or perhaps a slave, the house steward of some noble family, mingling half reluctantly with his superiors. For the time had not arrived, when the soft eunuchs of the East, and the bold bravoes of the heroic North, favorites and tools of some licentious lord, dared to insult the freeborn men of Rome, or gloried in the badges of their servitude.
The conversation ran, as it was natural to expect, on the probable results of the next day's election; and it was a little remarkable, that among these, who should have been the supporters of the democratic faction, there appeared to be far more of alarm and of suspicion, concerning the objects of Catiline, than of enthusiasm for the popular cause.
"He a man of the people, or the people's friend!" said an old grave-looking mechanic; "No, by the Gods! no more than the wolf is the friend of the sheepfold!"
"He may hate the nobles," said another, "or envy the great rich houses; but he loves nothing of the people, unless it be their purses, if he can get a chance to squeeze them"—
"Or their daughters," interrupted a third, "if they be fair and willing"—
"Little cares he for their good-will," cried yet a fourth, "so they are young and handsome. It is but eight days since, that some of his gang carried off Marcus', the butcher's, bride, Icilia, on the night of her bridal. They kept her three days; and on the fourth sent her home dishonored, with a scroll, 'that she was now a fit wife for a butcher'!"
"By the Gods!" exclaimed one or two of the younger men, "who was it did this thing?"
"One of the people's friends!" answered the other, with a sneer.
"The people have no friends, since Caius Marius died," said the deep voice of Fulvius Flaccus, as he passed casually through the crowd.