"I must be all smiles, all enchantments," she was saying to herself. "I must dissemble. I must win confidences. I must do everything, and anything. I have no right to indulge in grief any longer. Quintus's dear life is at stake!"
II
Lentulus did not go to the banquet of Favonius, to see the unwonted graciousness with which his niece received the advances of Lucius Ahenobarbus, Neither was Favonius himself present at his own entertainment. They, and several others of the high magnates of their party, had been called away by an urgent summons, and spent the evening in secluded conference with no less a personage than Pompeius, or as he dearly loved to be called, "the Magnus," in his splendid palace outside the walls on the Campus Martius. And here the conqueror of Mithridates—a stout, soldierly man of six-and-fifty, whose best quality was a certain sense of financial honesty, and whose worst an extreme susceptibility to the grossest adulation—told them that he had received letters from Labienus, Cæsar's most trusted lieutenant in Gaul, declaring that the proconsul's troops would never fight for him, that Cæsar would never be able to stir hand or foot against the decrees of the Senate, and that he, Labienus, would desert him at the first opportunity.
Cheerful news this to the noble lords, who had for years scented in Cæsar's existence and prosperity destruction to their own oligarchic rule of almost the known world. But when Cato, the most violent anti-Cæsarian of them all, a sharp, wiry man with angular features, and keen black eyes, demanded:—
"And now, Magnus, you will not hesitate to annihilate the enemies of the Republic?" a look of pained indecision flitted across Pompeius's face.
"Perpol, gentlemen," he exclaimed, "I would that I were well out of this. Sometimes I think that you are leading me into breaking with Cæsar for some ends of your own. He was my friend before you had a word of praise for me. He loved Julia; so did I." And the Magnus paused a moment, overcome by the thought of his dead wife. "Perhaps the Republic demands his sacrifice, perhaps—" and he cast a glance half of menace upon Lentulus Crus and Cato, "you are the guilty, not he. But I am in grievous doubt."
"Perhaps, Magnus," said Favonius, with half a sneer, "you think your forces inadequate. The two legions at Luceria are just detached from Cæsar. Perhaps you question their fidelity."
"Man," retorted the general, fiercely, bringing his foot down upon the soft rug on the floor, "I have but to stamp upon the ground to call up legions out of Italy; it is not that which I fear!"
The members of the conference looked uneasy; there was still a bare chance that Pompeius would go back to his old friendship with Cæsar.
"Gentlemen," went on the Magnus, "I have called you here to reach a final decision—peace or war. Let us consult a higher power than human." And he touched a little silver bell that was upon the table close at hand.