"Prætor," said Cicero in a dignified but serene voice, with no show of taunting or of triumph over his fallen enemy. "The Senate is assembled in the temple of Concord. The Fathers wait but for your coming. Give me your hand that I may conduct you thither."
"My hand, consul? Not as a friend's, I trust," said the undaunted Traitor.
"As a magistrate's, Cornelius Lentulus," replied Cicero severely, "whose hand, even if guilty, may not be polluted by an inferior's grasp."
"As a magistrate's you have it, consul. We go?"
"To the shrine of Concord! Antonius, my noble colleague, let us begone. Senators, follow us; escape you[pg 112] cannot, if you would; and I would spare you the disgrace of chains."
"We follow, Cicero," answered Cethegus in a hollow voice, and casting his eyes with a wild and haggard expression on Gabinius, he added in a whisper, "to our death!"
"Be it so!" replied the other. "One can but die once; and if his time be come, as well now as hereafter. I fear not death now, when I see it face to face. I think, I have heard thee say the same."
"He spoke," answered Statilius, with a bitter and sarcastic laugh, "of the death of others then. Would God, he then had met his own! So should we now have been innocent and fearless!"
"I at least, if not innocent, am fearless."
And watched on every side by the knights, and followed by the lictors, two behind each, the ringleaders of the plot, all save Cæparius who had fled, and Catiline—who was in open arms, an outlaw and proclaimed enemy of his country—the ringleaders were led away to trial.