To be, or not be, that is the question.
HAMLET.

Night was at hand.

The Roman Senate might not sit after the sun had set.

Although the Tribunes had failed, in the consternation of the moment, to respond to the call of Caesar, there was no doubt, that, if one night should intervene, those miscalled magistrates would check the course of justice.

Confined, apart one from the other, in free custody, the traitors had not failed to learn all that was passing, almost ere it passed.

Their hopes had been high, when the rabble were alert and thundering at the prison gates nor when the charge of the knights had beaten back the multitude, did they despair; for simultaneously with those evil tidings, they learned the effect of Caesar's speech; and shortly afterward the news reached them that Cicero's reply had found few willing auditors.

Confined, apart one from the other, they had eaten and drunken, and their hearts were “jocund and sublime”; the eloquence of Caesar, the turbulence of the tribunes, were their predominant ideas. Confined, apart one from the other, one thought was common to them all, immediate liberation, speedy vengeance.

And, in truth, immediate was the liberation; speedy the vengeance.

Night was at hand.

The Triumvirs, whose duty it was to superintend all capital punishments a thing almost unknown in Rome had been instructed to prepare whatever should be needful.

Lentulus sat alone in an inner chamber of the house of Publius Lentulus Spintherus, an aedile at that time. There was, it is true, a guard at the door, and clients under arms in the atrium; but in his own apartment the proud conspirator was still master of himself indeed, soon to be master of Rome, in his own frantic fantasy.

Bright lights were burning in bronze candelabra; rich wines were before him; his own favorite freedman leaned on the back of his ivory arm chair, and jested lightly on the discomfiture of noble Cicero, on the sure triumph of democratic Caesar.

“Fill up the glass again, my Phormio,” cried the exhilarated parricide; “this namesake of my own hath good wine, at the least we may not taste it again shortly fill up, I say; and do not spare to brim your own. What if our boys were beaten in the streets to-day. Brave Caesar was not beaten in the Senate.”

By Hercules! no! cried the wily Greek, base inheritor of a superb name and if he had been checked, there are the tribunes.”

“But he was not checked, Phormio?” asked the conspirator in evident anxiety.

“By your head, no! You shall yet be the THIRD CORNELIUS!

“WHO SHALL RULE ROME!

The door of the small room was suddenly thrown open, and the tall form of Cicero stood in the shadow of the entrance. The gleam of the lamps fell full on his white robes, and glittered on his ivory sceptre; but behind him it showed the grim dark features of the Capital Triumvirs, and flickered on the axe-heads of the lictors.

The glass fell from the hand of Lentulus, the wine untasted; and so deep was the silence of that awful moment, that the gurgling of the liquor as it trickled from the shattered fragments of the crystal goblet, was distinctly audible.

There was a silent pause no word, no motion followed the entrance of the Consul. Face to face, he stood with the deadliest of his foes, Catiline absent. Face to face, he stood with his overthrown and subdued enemy. And yet on his broad tranquil brow there was no frown of hatred; on his calm lip there there was no curl of gratified resentment, of high triumph.

Raising his hand, with a slow but very solemn gesture, he uttered in his deep harmonious accents, accents which at that moment spoke in almost an unnatural cadence, this one word

“Come.”

And calm, and proud, as the Consul, the degraded Senator, the fallen Consul replied, with a question,

“To death, Consul?”

“Come!”

“Give me my toga, Phormio.”

And robing himself, with an air as quiet and an expression as unconcerned as if he had been setting forth to a banquet, the proud Epicurean gazed with a calmer eye upon the Consul, than that good man could fix upon his victim.

“This signet to Sempronia that sword to no! no! this purse to thyself, Phormio! Consul, precede. I follow.”

And the step of the convicted Traitor, as he descended from the portico of that mansion, for the last time, was firmer, statelier, prouder, than that of his conductor.

The streets were thronged the windows crowded the housetops heaped with glaring mute spectators.

Some twenty knights, no more, unarmed, with the exception of their swords, composed the Consul's escort. Lentulus knew them, man by man, had drunk with them, played with them, lent money to them, borrowed of them.

He looked upon them.

They were the handful leading him to death! What made them break the ties which bound them to their brother noble? What made them forget mutual pleasures enjoyed, mutual perils incurred, mutual benefits accepted?

They were the nobles, true to their order.

He looked upon the thronged streets upon the crowded windows upon the heaped housetops, he saw myriads, myriads who had fed on his bounty, encouraged his infamy, hoped from his atrocity, urged him to his crime, myriads who now frowned upon him cursed him howled at him or more cowardly were silent. Myriads, who might have saved him, and did not.

Wherefore?

They were the people, false to their leader.

He looked from the handful to the myriad and shook himself, as a lion in his wrath; and stamped the dust from his sandals.

Cicero saw the movement, and read its meaning. He met the glance, not humiliated, but prouder for the mob's reprobation; and said, what he would not have said had the glance been conscious

“Thou seest! Hearest!”

“The voice of the People!” answered the traitor with a bitter sneer.

“The voice of God!” replied the Consul, looking upward.

“That voice of God shall shout for joy at thy head on the rostrum! Such is the fate of all who would serve the people!”

The eloquent tongue, stabbed with the harlot's bodkin, the head and the hand, nailed on the beaked column in after days, showed which best knew the people, their savior, or their parricide.

There is a place in Rome there is a place reader, thou mayest have seen it on the right hand as thou goest up the steps of the Asylum ascending from the forum to the capitol.

“There is a place, wrote Sallust, some nineteen hundred years ago There is a place, within the prison, which is called Tullianum, after you have ascended a little way to the left, about twelve feet underground. It is built strongly with walls on every side, and arched above with a stone vaulting. But its aspect is foul and terrible from neglect, darkness, and stench.”

It is there now thou mayest have seen it, reader. Men call it the Mamertine Prison. It was then called Tullianum, because it was so antique at that time, that vague tradition only told of its origin long centuries before, built by the fabulous King Tullius.

The Tullianum The Mamertine Prison.

The bath, which Jugurtha found very cold, when the earrings had been torn from his bleeding ears, and, stript of his last vestment, he was let down to die by the hangman's noose.

The prison, in which, scarce one century later, Saint Paul was held in durance, what time “Agrippa said unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, had he not appealed unto Caesar.”

Unto Caesar?

Caesar the third Emperor, the third tyrant of the Roman people.

Lentulus had appealed unto Caesar, and was cast likewise into the
Tullianum.

The voice of the people, is the voice of God.

Whether of the twain slew Lentulus? whether of the twain set free Paul, from the Tullianum?

In those days, there was a tall and massive structure above that sordid and tremendous vault, on the right hand as you go up towards the capitol.

The steps of the asylum were lined on either side by legionaries in full armor; and as the Consul walked up with his victim, side by side, each soldier faced about, and, by a simple movement, doubling their files, occupied the whole space of the steep ascent with a solid column; while all the heights above, and the great capitol itself, bristled with spears, and flashed with tawny light from the dense ranks of brazen corslets.

The Capital Triumvirs received the Consul at the door; and with his prisoner he passed inward.

It was in perfect keeping with the Roman character, that a man, hopeless of success, should die without an effort; and to the fullest, Lentulus acted out that character.

Impassive and unmoved, he went to his death. He disgraced his evil life by no cowardice in death; by no fruitless call upon the people for assistance, by no vain cry to the nobles for mercy.

But it was the impassibility of the Epicurean, not of the Stoic, that sustained him.

He went to die, like his brother democrats of France, with the madness of Atheism in his heart, the mirth of Perdition on his tongue.

They two, the Convict and the Consul, ascended a little, two or three steps, to the left, and entered a large apartment, paved, walled, and roofed with stone; but in the centre of the floor there was a small round aperture.

There were a dozen persons in that guard-room, four of whom were his fellow-traitors Gabinius, Statilius, Caeparius, and Cethegus two praetors, four legionaries, and two Moorish slaves composed the group, until with the Triumvirs, and his twelve lictors, Cicero entered.

“Ha! my Caeparius!” exclaimed Lentulus, who had not seen him since the morning of his arrest. “We have met again. But I slept my sleep out. Thou might'st as well have slept too; for we are both met here

“To die! to die! Great Gods! to die!” cried Caeparius utterly overcome, and almost fainting with despair.

“Great Gods indeed!” replied Lentulus with his accustomed half-sardonic, half-indolent sneer. “They must be great, indeed, to let such a puppet as that,” and he pointed to Cicero, as he spoke, “do as he will with us. To die! to die! Tush what is that but to sleep? to sleep without the trouble of awaking, or the annoyance of to-morrow? What sayest thou, my Cethegus?”

“That thou art a sluggard, a fool, and a coward; curses! curses! curses upon thee!” And he made an effort to rush against his comrade, as if to strike him; and, when the guards seized him and dragged him back, he shook his fist at Cicero, and gnashed his teeth, and howling out, “Thou too! thou too shalt die proscribed, and thy country's foe!” by a sudden effort cast off the men who held him, and crying, “Slaves and dastards, see how a Roman noble dies,” rushed, with his head down, at the solid wall, as a buffalo rushes blindly against an elephant.

He fell as if he were dead, the blood gushing from eyes, nose, and mouth, and lay senseless.

Lentulus thought he was killed, gazed on him for a moment tranquilly, and then said with a quiet laugh

“He was a fool always a rash fool! Then turning to Cicero, he added By Hercules! this is slow work. I am exceeding hungry, and somewhat dry; and, as I fancy I shall eat nothing more to-day, nor drink, I would fain go to sleep.”

“Would'st thou drink, Lentulus?” asked one of the Triumvirs.

“Would I not, had I wine?”

“Bring wine,” said the magistrate to one of the Moorish slaves; who went out and returned in an instant with a large brazen platter supporting several goblets.

Lentulus seized one quickly, and swallowed it at a mouthful there is a hot thirst in that last excitement but as the flavor reached his palate, when the roughness of the harsh draught had passed away, he flung the cup down scornfully and said,

“Finish it! Take this filthy taste from my lips! Let me rest!”

And with the words, he advanced to the Moors who stood beside the well-like aperture, and without a word suffered them to place the rope under his arms, and lower him into the pit.

Just as his head, however, was disappearing, he cast his eyes upward, and met the earnest gaze of the Consul.

“The voice of the people! the man of the people!” he cried sarcastically. “Fool! fool! they shall avenge me! Think upon me near Formiae!”

Was that spite, or a prophecy?

The eyes of the dying sometimes look far into futurity.

The haughty traitor was beyond the sight, before his words had ceased to ring in the ears of the spectators.

There was a small low sound heard from below not a groan, not a struggle but a rustle, a sob, a flutter silence.

'So did(12) that Patrician, of the most noble house of the Cornelii, who once held consular dominion in Rome, meet his end, merited by his course of life, and his overt actions.'

Cethegus perished senseless, half dead by his own deed.

Caeparius died sullen; Gabinius weak and almost fainting; Statilius struggling and howling. All by a hard and slavish death, strangled by the base noose of a foreign hangman.

An hour afterward, their corpses were hurled down the Gemonian Stairs, among the shouts and acclamations of the drunken slavish rabble.

An hour afterward, Cicero stood on the rostrum, near the Libonian well that rostrum whereon, at a later day Lentulus' prophecy was fulfilled and called out, in a voice as solemn and almost as deep as thunder,

“THEY WERE!”

And the voice of the people yelled out its joy, because they were no longer; and hailed their slayer the Savior and Father of his country.

A few years afterward, how did they not hail Anthony?