"I will quell it. Look you, boy, you love Julia, the bright daughter of Hortensia—she is worth loving, by the way, and Catiline hath noted it. You fancy that she is safe now, at the Latin villa of her mother. She is not safe—nor at the Latin villa! I have touched you, have I not?"
Arvina started, as if a serpent had bitten him; but in a[pg 107] moment he recovered himself, saying calmly, "Tush! it is a poor deceit! you cannot alarm me."
"In truth it was a deceit, but not so very poor after all, since it succeeded. You were sorely wounded a few days since, Arvina, and wrote, I think, to Julia, requesting her to set forth at once to Rome, with Hortensia."
"Folly!" replied Arvina, "Drivelling folly! Come, hasten your dressing, Lentulus! You need not perfume your hair, and curl your beard, as if you were going to a banquet."
"I never hasten anything, my Paullus. Things done hastily, are rarely things done well. What? thou dids't not write such a letter?—I thought thou hadst—of this at least I am sure, that she received such an one; and set out for Rome, within an hour after."
"By the Gods!" exclaimed Paullus, a little eagerly, for Lentulus had changed the slight bantering tone in which he had been speaking, for a quick short decided accent seeming to denote that he was in earnest. "Where is she now. Speak, Lentulus, I adjure thee. Tell me, if thou wouldst have me serve thee!"
"I thought I could abate that pride somewhat," said Lentulus sneeringly. "I thought so indeed. But, by all the Gods! Arvina, I know not where your Julia may be now. I know whither they are conveying her—where she soon will be—but I fancy that the knowing it, would give you but little pleasure; unless, indeed, you could prevent it, my poor youth!"
"To know, is something at least toward preventing it. If, therefore, thou art not, as I believe indeed thou art, merely mocking me, I pray thee tell me, whither are they conveying her? Where will she soon be?"
"To the camp of Manlius, nigh Fiesolè! In the arms of one Lucius Sergius Catiline—a great admirer of your auburn-haired, blue-eyed beauties, my Arvina."
The young man, with his eyes gleaming and his face crimsoning with furious rage, made two steps forward, and seizing the burly traitor by the throat, compressed his gullet, as if in an iron vice, and shook him to and fro as easily as if he had been a stripling.