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Many of Cæsar's friends, frightened by his death, or rather cowed by the absence of his genius, had found it safer to retreat from the Cæsarean party, of which the Antonys, with Dolabella, the cutthroats and gladiators of the empire, had the command. Hirtius and Pansa, with Balbus and Oppius, were among them. They, at this moment, were powerful in Rome.
But when Gerrard came back from supping with the James Antonys, he found his friend reclining on the verandah, in an attitude suggestive of despondency. "Sold again!" said a sepulchral voice from the recesses of the long chair. "You don't mean that she has refused you, Bob?" "Oh, don't I?" the voice suggested something more than sulkiness. "If I don't, I'm very much mistaken.
Just finish your letter to him, and then let us sit out on the verandah a little before going to bed. The Antonys' guests will be leaving, and you know how pretty the torches look among the hills." "How can I finish my letter when I don't know whether there is anything in his to answer?" complained Marian. "Well, I will leave it unsealed, and put in an extra sheet if necessary.
For unnumbered generations of our family we had been Antonys, Gerards, Ralphs, Martins; the name of Francis was unknown to the tree; he never ceased to inveigh against it, and foretold the time when it would stand out like a parasite upon its topmost shoot. "Your Italian ecstatic," he told my mother, "began life by running away from his father and only came back for the purpose of robbing him.
These are the questions that men of the type put to themselves over and over again but there are Cleopatras to mate with Antonys, Helens of Troy and Lady Hamiltons who can snap their fingers in the face of such odds and win. But Sally was not of this blood.
"Oh, you haven't heard that the dear Colonel has got his K.C.B.? They are all talking about it to-night it was in the mail that came in this afternoon." "I have not had time to open any newspapers," said Gerrard wearily. "I am glad to hear it, if the Antonys are pleased."
Suppose Antony had written, 'Return to your sorrowing chief, and all shall be forgiven, and done the heavy father business when they turned up, and set both Mrs Antonys and Lady Cinnamond to call on the Begum Arbuthnot, what would it have been but an encouragement to other fellows to go and do likewise?" "Will the fellow find it worth it, I wonder?
"What a disgrace would it be that Antony, after so many robberies, after bringing back banished comrades, after selling the taxes of the State, putting up kingdoms to auction, shall rise up on the consular bench and address a free Senate! * Can you have an assured peace while there is an Antony in the State or many Antonys?
If courtesy to Cæsar, if provinces given up here and there to Antonys and Metelluses, if flattery lavished on Pompey could avail anything, he could not afford to dispense with such aids. It all availed nothing. From this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of despair, and on many occasions of actual misery.
Among those who at Cicero's period dealt with politics in Rome all of whom, no doubt, spoke of the Republic as the vessel of State which was to be defended by all persons there were four classes. These were they who simply desired the plunder of the State the Catilines, the Sullas of the day, and the Antonys; men such as Verres had been, and Fonteius, and Autronius.
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