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He perceived the absolute necessity of following that impulse up to action, before, by a revulsion no less sudden than the late change from despondency to fierceness, their minds should again subside into the lethargy of doubt and dismay. "But say thou, Sergius," he continued, "how shall it be, and who shall strike the blow that is to seal Rome’s liberty, our vengeance?"
The rare beauty of the Italian race—the strength and symmetry of the unrivalled warrior nation, of which these were, for the most part, the noblest and most striking specimens; the grand flow of the snow-white draperies, faced with the broad crimson laticlave—the classic grace of their positions—the absence of all rigid angular lines, of anything mean or meagre, fantastic or tawdry in the garb of the solemn concourse, rendered the meeting of Rome’s Fathers a widely different spectacle from the convention of any other representative assembly, the world has ever witnessed.
There was question of celebrating the eighteen hundredth anniversary of the glorious martyrdom of Rome’s first great bishop, so many prelates had come together, also in order to venerate Peter in the person of his venerable successor, who had now so long and so gloriously borne witness to the Truth—the Truth in its plenitude, as first committed to Peter and his fellow-apostles.
Twenty-four years ago, the avenging sword of Sylla had purged the state of its bloodthirsty demagogues, and their brute followers; twenty-four years ago his powerful hand had reestablished Rome’s ancient constitution, full of checks and balances, which secured equal rights to every Roman citizen; which secured all equality, in short to all men, save that which no human laws can give, equality of social rank, and equality of wealth.
Skirting the base of the Palatine hill, they passed the old circular temple of Remus to the right hand, and the most venerable relic of Rome’s infancy, the Ruminal Fig tree, beneath which the she-wolf was believed to have given suck to the twin progeny of Mars and the hapless Ilia.
They were of different years and sex—one, a magnificent and stately matron, such as Rome’s matrons were when Rome was at the proudest, already well advanced in years, yet still possessing not merely the remains of former charms, but much of real beauty, and that too of the noblest and most exalted order.
"And why not, I beseech you, madam?" he replied angrily; "or what is there in that which I desire you to tell the girl to do, that you have not done twenty times yourself, and Fulvia, and Sempronia, and half Rome’s noblest ladies? Tush! I say, tush! go do it." "She is my daughter, Sergius," answered Aurelia, in a tone of deep tenderness; "a daughter’s honor must be something to every mother!"
The night was such as has already been described: gloomy and lowering in its character, as was the aspect of the political horizon, and most congenial to the fearful plots, which were even now in progress against the lives of Rome’s best citizens, against the sanctity of her most solemn temples, the safety of her domestic hearths, the majesty of her inviolable laws, the very existence of her institutions, of her empire, of herself as one among the nations of the earth.
His garb was that of a patrician of the highest order; though tinctured, like the arrangement of his hair, with not a little of that soft luxurious taste which had, of latter years, begun so generally to pervade Rome’s young nobility.
The tall spare military-looking Roman, with his hawk nose and eagle eye, and close shaved face and short black hair, his every attitude and look and gesture full of pride and dominion; the versatile and polished Greek, beautiful both in form and face, as a marble of Praxiteles, beaming with intellect, and having every feature eloquent of poetry and imagination, and something of contempt for the sterner and harder type of mind, to which he and his countryman were subjugated; and last, the wild strong-limbed yet stolid-looking German, glaring out with his bright blue eyes, full of a sort of stupid fierceness, from the long curls of his auburn hair, a type of man in his most primitive state, the hunter and the warrior of the forest, enslaved by Rome’s insatiate ambition.
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