The goblets were brimmed with the liquid madness;[pg 64] they were quaffed to the very dregs; they clanged empty upon the marble floor.
Ten minutes more, and the hall was deserted; and mounted on proud horses, brought suddenly together, by a perfect combination of time and place, with the broad steel heads of their javelins sparkling in the moonbeams, and the renowned eagle poised with bright wings above them, the escort of the Roman Traitor rode through the city streets, at midnight, audacious, in full military pomp, in ordered files, with a cavalry clarion timing their steady march—rode unresisted through the city gates, under the eyes of a Roman cohort, to try the fortunes of civil war in the provinces, frustrate of massacre and conflagration in the capitol.
Cicero knew it, and rejoiced; and when he cried aloud on the following day, "Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit—He hath departed, he hath stolen out, he hath gone from among us, he hath burst forth into war"—his great heart thrilled, and his voice quivered, with prophetic joy and conscious triumph. He felt even then that he had "Saved his Country."
CHAPTER VII
THE AMBASSADORS.
Give first admittance to th' ambassadors.
Hamlet.
It wanted a short time of noon, on a fine bracing day in the latter end of November.