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Updated: June 15, 2025
"Lucia has given herself to you; and you have sold yourself to Catiline! By all the fiends of Hades, better it were for you, rash boy, that you had ne’er been born, than now to fail me!" Arvina, trembling with the deep consciousness of hospitality betrayed, and feeling the first stings of remorse already, stood thunderstricken, and unable to articulate.
She gazed at it for a moment, wondering from whom it could come; since she had no habitual correspondent, and the hand-writing, though beautiful, was strange to her. She opened it, and read, her wonder and agitation increasing with every line— "You love Paullus Arvina," thus it ran, "and are loved by him. He is worthy all your affection. Are you worthy of him, I know not.
And then the dull hissing sound of the death stroke; and the voiceless parting of the bold spirit! Ye Gods! ye Gods! it is a joy, to live, and almost to die for!" Paullus Arvina looked at her in speechless wonder.
Just at this instant, as between terror and amazement she was on the verge of fainting, a clanging step was heard without; the crimson draperies that covered the door, were put aside; and, clad in glittering armour, Paullus Arvina stood before her.
He met no member of the family in the dim-lighted peristyle; the passages were silent and deserted; no gay domestic circle was collected in the tablinum, no slaves were waiting in the atrium; and, as he stole forth cautiously with guarded footsteps, Arvina almost fancied that he had been forgotten; and that the master of the house believed him to have retired when he left the dining hall.
He is the greatest, as the first of poets; and surpassed all his followers as much in the knowledge of the human heart with its ten thousands of conflicting passions, as in the structure of the kingly verse, wherein he delineated character as never man did, saving only he. But hold, Arvina.
The slave laughed, knowing well that his master was but jesting, mounted the horse, and rode him at a gentle trot, up the slope of the Cælian hill, from which Arvina had but a little while before descended.
He spoke solemnly and sadly; and on his earnest face there was a deep and almost awful expression, that held Arvina mute and abashed, he knew not wherefore; and when the great man had ceased from speaking, he made a silent gesture of salutation and withdrew, thus gravely warned, scarce conscious if the statesman noted his departure; for he had fallen into a deep reverie, and was perhaps musing on the mysteries yet unrevealed of the immortal soul, so totally careless did he now appear of all sublunary matters.
Julia," answered Arvina, laughing; "but very valiant warriors, and hospitable beyond measure to those who visit their native mountains; admirers, too, of women, whom they regard as almost divine, beyond all things. I see that stout fellow looking wild admiration at you now, from his clear blue eyes, though he would fain be thought above the reach of wonder."
So stood affairs on the evening of the seventeenth; and, although at times a suspicion—not a fear, for of that he was incapable—flitted across the mind of the traitor, that things were not going on as he could wish them; that the alienation of Paullus Arvina, and the absence of his injured daughter, must probably work together to the discomfiture of the conspiracy; still, as hour after hour passed away, and no discovery was made, he revelled in his anticipated triumph.
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