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Updated: June 15, 2025
Have not I lured you into falsehood, momentary falsehood it is true, yet still falsehood, to your Julia? Have I not tangled you in the nets of this most foul conspiracy? Betrayed you, a bound slave, to the monster—the soul-destroyer?" Arvina groaned aloud, but made no answer, so deeply did his own thoughts afflict, so terribly did her strong words oppress him. "But it is over—it is over now!"
But during the brief parley Arvina had disengaged the folds of his gown from his light shoulder, and wrapped it closely about his left arm, and when Catiline rushed in he parried the blow with his sword, and raising the little horn he carried, to his lips, blew a long piercing call, which was answered by a loud shout close at hand, and by the rush of many feet without the grotto.
"He was the Consul’s slave," answered Arvina, almost mechanically—for he was utterly bewildered by all that had passed—"Medon, my freedman Thrasea’s cousin." "The Consul’s, ha!—which Consul’s? speak! fool! speak, ere I tear it from your throat; Cicero’s, ha?" "Cicero’s, Catiline!" "Here is a coil; and knows he of this matter? I mean Cicero." "He knows it." "That is to say, you told him.
Nor did he err in his premises; for had not Arvina been convinced that new and more perilous schemes were on the point of being executed against himself, he would have remained silent as to the names of the traitors; however he might have deemed it his duty to reveal the meditated treason.
Arvina caught but a momentary glance of the figure; yet was that glance enough. He recognized the spare but muscular form, all brawn and bone and sinew; he recognized the long and pardlike bounds!—It was his tyrant, and, as he thought, his Fate!
"Not carefully," he answered, "but I have noticed that there is a little gorge just beyond the grotto, broken with crags and blocks of tufo, and overgrown with much brushwood, and many junipers and ivy." "That will do then, I warrant me," replied Arvina. "Now mark what I tell you, Thrasea; for it may be, that my life shall depend on your acting as I direct.
What, Fulvia, know you not young Arvina—one of the great Cæcilii? By Hercules! my Curius, he won the best of the quinquertium from such competitors as Victor and Aristius Fuscus, and ran twelve stadii, with the heaviest breast-plate and shield in the armory, quicker than it has been performed since the days of Licinius Celer.
"Do you think purity could long exist in the same house with Catiline and Orestilla? Paullus Arvina, the scenes I have beheld, the orgies I have shared, the atmosphere of voluptuous sin I have breathed, almost from my cradle, had changed the cold heart of the virgin huntress into the fiery pulses of the wanton Venus!
"How do I know it?—thus," answered the artizan, drawing from a cupboard under his counter, a weapon precisely the facsimile in every respect of that in his hand: "There never were but two of these made, and I made them; the scabbard of this will fit that; see how the very chased work fits! I sold this, but not to you, Arvina; and I do not believe that it was given to you."
Now then, Arvina, doff your toga, you will not surely ride in that." "Indeed I will not," replied Paullus, "if master Volero will suffer me to leave it here till my return."
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