THE YOUNG PATRICIAN.
Not always robes of state are worn,
Most nobly by the nobly born.
H. W. H.
The light of that eventful morning, which broke, pregnant with ruin to the
conspiracy, found Aulus Fulvius and his band, still struggling among the
rugged defiles which it was necessary to traverse, in order to gain the
Via Cassia or western branch of the Great North Road.
It had been necessary to make a wide circuit, in order to effect this,
inasmuch as the Latin road, of which the Labican way was a branch, left
the city to the South-eastward, nearly opposite to the Flaminian, or north
road, so that the two if prolonged would have met in the forum, and made
almost a right line.
Nor had this been their only difficulty, for they had been compelled to
avoid all the villages and scattered farm houses, which lay on their
route, in the fear that Julia’s outcries and resistance—for she frequently
succeeded in removing the bandage from her mouth—would awaken suspicion
and cause their arrest, while in the immediate vicinity of Rome.
At one time, the party had been within a very few miles of the city,
passing over the Tiber, scarce five miles above the Mulvian bridge, about
an hour before the arrest of the ambassadors; and it was from this point,
that Aulus sent off his messenger to Lentulus, announcing his success,
thereby directly disobeying the commands of Catiline, who had enjoined it
on him almost with his last words, to communicate this enterprise to none
of his colleagues in guilt.
Crossing the Flaminian, or great northern road, they had found a relay of
fresh horses, stationed in a little grove, of which by this time they
stood greatly in need, and striking across the country, at length reached
the Cassian road, near the little river Galera, just as the sun rose above
the eastern hills.
At this moment they had not actually effected above ten miles of their
journey, as reckoned from the gates of Rome to the camp of Catiline, which
was nearly two hundred miles distant, though they had traversed nearly
forty during the night, in their wearisome but unavoidable circuit.
They were, however, admirably mounted on fresh horses, and had procured a
_cisium_, or light carriage for two persons, not much unlike in form to a
light gig, in which they had placed the unhappy Julia, with a slight boy,
the son of Caius Crispus, as the driver.
By threats of the most atrocious nature, they had at length succeeded in
compelling her to temporary silence. Death she had not only despised, but
implored, even when the point of their daggers were razing the skin of her
soft neck; and so terribly were they embarrassed and exasperated by her
persistence, that it is probable they would have taken her life, had it
not been for fear of Catiline, whose orders were express to bring her to
his camp alive and in honor.
At length Aulus Fulvius had threatened in the plainest language outrages
so enormous, that the poor girl’s spirit sank, and that she took an oath,
in order to avoid immediate indignities, and those the most atrocious, to
remain silent during the next six hours.
Had she been able to possess herself of any weapon, she would undoubtedly
have destroyed herself, as the only means she could imagine of escaping
what to her was worse than loss of life, the loss of honor; and it was
chiefly in the hope of effecting this ere nightfall, that she took the
oath prescribed to her, in terms of such tremendous sanctity, that no
Roman would dream of breaking it, on any pretext of compulsion.
Liberated by their success in this atrocious scheme, from that
apprehension, they now pushed forward rapidly, and reached the station at
Baccanæ, in a wooded gorge between a range of low hills, and a clear lake,
at about nine in the morning, of our time, or the third hour by Roman
computation.
Here they obtained a fresh horse for the vehicle which carried Julia, and
tarrying so long only as to swallow a draught of wine, they pressed onward
through a steep defile along which the road wound among wooded crags
toward Sutrium.
At this place, which was a city of some note, they were joined by forty or
fifty partisans, well armed and mounted on good horses, all veteran
soldiers who had been settled on the confiscated estates of his enemies by
the great usurper Sylla, and thenceforth feeling themselves strong enough
to overawe any opposition they might meet on the way, they journeyed at a
slower rate in perfect confidence of success, numbering now not less than
sixty well-equipped Cavaliers.
Before noon, they were thirty miles distant from Rome, and had reached the
bottom of a long and almost precipitous ascent where the road, scorning
any divergence to the right or left, scaled the abrupt heights of a craggy
hill, known at the present day as the Monte Soriano, the ancient name of
which has not descended to these times.
Scarcely however had they reached the first pitch of the hill, in loose
and straggling order, when the rearmost rider, came spurring furiously to
the head of the column, and announced to Aulus Fulvius, that they were
pursued by a body of men, nearly equal to themselves in number, who were
coming up at a rate so rapid, as made it certain that they would be
overtaken, encumbered as they were with the wheeled carriage conveying the
hapless Julia.
A brief council was held, in which, firmly resisting the proposal of the
new-comers to murder their captive, and disperse in small bodies among the
hills, Aulus Fulvius and Caius Crispus determined on dividing their men
into two parties. The first of these, commanded by the smith, and
consisting of two-thirds of their whole force, was destined to press
forward as rapidly as possible; while Fulvius, with the second, should
make a charge down hill upon the pursuers, by which it was hoped that they
might be so effectually checked and alarmed as to give up the pursuit.
No time was lost in the execution, a second horse was attached to the
_cisium_, for they had many sumpter animals along with them, and several
spare chargers; and so much speed did they make, that Crispus had reached
the summit of the ridge and commenced the descent before the pursuers had
come up with Fulvius and the rear.
There is a little hollow midway the ascent, which is thickly set with
evergreen oaks, and hollies, and in the centre of this hollow, the road
makes a turn almost at right angles.
Behind the corner of the wood, which entirely concealed them from any
persons coming up the hill, Aulus drew up his men in double lines, and as
the band, whom he suspected to be in pursuit of him, came into the open
space, in loose array, and with their horses blown and weary, he charged
upon them with a fierce shout, and threw them into disorder in a moment.
Nothing could indicate more clearly, the utter recklessness of the
Catilinarian party, and the cheap estimate at which they held human life,
than the perfect unconcern with which they set upon a party of men, whose
identity with those whom they feared was so entirely unproved.
Nothing, at the same time, could indicate more clearly, the fury and
uncalculating valor which had grown up among them, nurtured by the strange
policy of Catiline, during a peace of eighteen years’ duration.
Eighteen men, for, Aulus Fulvius included, they numbered no more, set
fiercely upon a force of nearly three times their number, with no
advantage of arms or accoutrement, or even of discipline, for although all
old soldiers, these men had not, for years, been accustomed to act
together, nor were any of them personally acquainted with the young
leader, who for the first time commanded them.
The one link which held them together, was welded out of crime and
desperation. Each man knew that his neighbor, as well as himself, must win
or die—there was no compromise, no half-way measure that could by any
possibility preserve them.
And therefore as one man they charged, as one man they struck, and death
followed every blow.
At their first onset, with horses comparatively fresh, against the blown
chargers and disordered mass of their pursuers, they were entirely
successful. Above a dozen of their opponents went down horse and man, and
the remainder were driven scattering along the slope, nearly to the foot
of the declivity.
Uncertain as he had been at the first who were the men, whom he thus
recklessly attacked, Aulus Fulvius had not well turned the angle of the
wood, before he recognized the faces of almost all the leading men of the
opposite party.
They were the oldest and most trusty of the clients of his house; and half
a dozen, at the least, of his own name and kindred led them.
It needed not a moment therefore, to satisfy him that they were in quest
of himself, and of himself alone—that they were no organized troop and
invested with no state authority, but merely a band suddenly collected
from his father’s household, to bring him back in person from the fatal
road on which he had entered so fatally.
Well did he know the rigor of the old Roman law, as regarded the paternal
power, and well did he know, the severity with which his father would
execute it.
The terrors inspired by the thought of an avenging country, would have
been nothing—the bare idea of being surrendered a fettered captive to his
dread father’s indignation, maddened him.
Fiercely therefore, as he rushed out leading his ambushed followers, the
fury of his first charge was mere boy’s play when compared to the virulent
and concentrated rage with which he fought, after he had discovered fairly
against whom he was pitted.
Had his men shared his feeling, the pursuers must have been utterly
defeated and cut to pieces, without the possibility of escape.
But while he recognized his personal enemies in the persons he attacked,
the men who followed him as quickly perceived that those, whom they were
cutting down, were not regular soldiers, nor led by any Roman magistrate.
They almost doubted, therefore, as they charged, whether they were not in
error; and when the horsemen of the other faction were discomfitted and
driven down the hill on the instant, they felt no inclination to pursue or
harass them farther.
Not so, however, Aulus. He had observed in the first onset, the features
of a cousin, whom he hated; and now, added to other motives, the fierce
thirst for his kinsman’s blood, stirred his blood almost into frenzy.
Knowing, moreover, that he was himself the object of their pursuit, he
knew likewise that the pursuit would not be given up for any casual check,
but that to conquer, he must crush them.
Precipitately, madly therefore he drove down the hill, oversetting
horseman after horseman, the greater part of them unwounded—for the short
Roman sword, however efficient at close quarters and on foot, was a most
ineffective weapon for a cavalier—until he reached the bottom of the hill.
There he reined up his charger for a moment, and looked back, waving his
hand and shouting loudly to bring on his comrades to a second charge.
To his astonishment, however, he saw them collected in a body at nearly a
mile’s distance, on the brow of the first hill, beckoning him to come
back, and evidently possessed by no thought, less than that of risking
their lives or liberty by any fresh act of hostility.
In the mean time, the fugitives, who had now reached the level ground and
found themselves unpressed, began to halt; and before Aulus Fulvius had
well made up his mind what to do, they had been rallied and reformed, and
were advancing slowly, with a firm and unbroken front, well calculated to
deter his handful, which had already been diminished in strength, by one
man killed, and four or five more or less severely wounded, from rashly
making any fresh attack.
Alone and unsupported, nothing remained for him but to retreat if
possible, and make his way back to his people, who, he felt well assured
would again charge, if again menaced with pursuit. To do this, however,
had now ceased to be an easy, perhaps to be a feasible matter.
Between himself and his own men, there were at least ten of his father’s
clients; several of them indeed were wounded, and all had been overthrown
in the shock either by himself or his troopers; but they had all regained
their horses, and—apparently in consequence of some agreement or tacit
understanding with his comrades, were coming down the hill at a gentle
trot to rejoin their own party.
Now it was that Aulus began to regret having sent forward the smith, and
those of the conspirators to whom he was individually known, with Julia in
the van. Since of the fellows who had followed him thus far, merely
because inferior will always follow superior daring, and who now appeared
mightily inclined to desert him, not three were so much as acquainted with
his name, and not one had any intimacy with him, or indeed any community
of feeling unless it were the community of crime.
These things flashed upon Aulus in an instant; the rather that he saw the
hated cousin, whom he had passed unnoticed in his headlong charge, quietly
bringing the clients into line between himself and his wavering
associates.
He was in fact hemmed in on every side; he was alone, and his horse, which
he had taxed to the uttermost, was wounded and failing fast.
His case was indeed desperate, for he could now see that his own faction
were drawing off already with the evident intention of rejoining the bulk
of the party, careless of his fate, and glad to escape at so small a
sacrifice.
Still, even in this extremity he had no thought of surrender—indeed to him
death and surrender were but two names for one thing.
He looked to the right and to the left, if there were any possibility of
scaling the wooded slopes and so rejoining the sturdy swordsmith without
coming to blows again with his father’s household; but one glance told him
that such hopes were vain indeed. On either hand the crags rose
inaccessible even to the foot of man, unless he were a practised
mountaineer.
Then rose the untamed spirit of his race, the firm Roman hardihood,
deeming naught done while anything remains to do, and holding all things
feasible to the bold heart and ready hand—the spirit which saved Rome when
Hannibal was thundering at her gates, which made her from a petty town the
queen and mistress of the universe.
He gathered his reins firmly in his hand, and turning his horse’s head
down the declivity put the beast to a slow trot, as if he had resolved to
force his way toward Rome; but in a moment, when his manœuvre had, as he
expected caused the men in his rear to put their horses to their speed,
and thus to break their line, he again wheeled, and giving his charger the
spur with pitiless severity drove up the steep declivity like a
thunderbolt, and meeting his enemies straggling along in succession,
actually succeeded in cutting down two, before he was envelopped, unhorsed
and disarmed, which, as his cousin’s men came charging up and down the
road at once, it was inevitable that he must be from the beginning.
"Curses upon thee! it is thou!" he said, grinding his teeth and shaking
his weaponless hand at his kinsman in impotent malignity—"it is thou!
Caius. Curses upon thee! from my birth thou hast crossed me."
"It were better thou hadst died, Aulus," replied the other solemnly, but
in sorrow more than anger, "better that thou hadst died, than been so led
back to Rome."
"Why didst _thou_ not kill me then?" asked Aulus with a sneer of sarcastic
spite—"Why dost thou not kill me now."
"Thou art _sacro sanctus_!" answered the other, with an expression of
horror in his eyes—"doomed, set apart, sanctified unto destruction—words,
alas! henceforth avail nothing. Bind him"—he continued, turning toward his
men—"Bind him, I say, hard, with his hands behind his back, and his legs
under his horse’s belly! Go your way," he added, "Go to your bloody camp,
and accursed leader"—waving his hand as he spoke, to the veterans above,
who seemed half inclined to make an effort to rescue the prisoner. "Go
your way. We have no quarrel with you now; we came for him, and having got
him we return."
"What?" cried the dark-eyed boy who had come up too late to the Latin
villa on the preceding night, and who, strange to state, was riding with
the clients of the Fulvian house, unwearied—"What, will you not save
_her_? will you not do that for which alone I led ye hither? will you be
falsifiers of your word and dishonored?"
"Alas!" answered Caius Fulvius, "it is impossible.—We are outnumbered, my
poor boy, and may not aid you, as we would; but be of good cheer, this
villain taken, they will not dare to harm her."
The youth shook his head mournfully; but made no reply.
Aulus, however, who had heard all that was said, glared savagely upon the
boy, and after examining his features minutely for a moment exclaimed—"I
know thy face! who art thou! quick thy name?"
"I have no name!" replied the other gloomily.
"That voice! I know thee!" he shouted, an expression of infernal joy
animating his features. "Thou miserable fool, and driveller! and is it for
this—for this, that thou hast brought the bloodhounds on my track, to
restore _her_ to _him_? Mark me, then, mark me, and see if I am not
avenged—her dishonor, her agony, her infamy are no less certain than my
death. Catiline, Catiline shall avenge me upon her—upon him—upon thee—thou
weaker, more variable thing than—woman! Catiline! think’st thou he will
fail?"
"He hath failed ere now!" replied the boy proudly.
"Failed! when?" exclaimed Aulus, forgetting his own situation in the
excitement of the wordy contest.
"When he crossed me"—then turning once more to the leader of the Fulvian
clients, the dark-eyed boy said in a calm determined voice, "You will not,
therefore, aid me?"
"We cannot."
"Enough! Look to him, then, that he escape you not."
"Fear us not. But whither goest thou?"
"To rescue Julia. Tell thou to Arvina how these things have fallen out,
and whither they have led her; and, above all, that one is on her traces
who will die or save her."
"Ha! ha!" laughed Aulus savagely in the glee of his vengeful triumph,
"Thou wilt die, but not save her. I am avenged, already—avenged in Julia’s
ruin!"
"Wretch!" exclaimed his kinsman, indignant and disgusted—"almost it shames
me that my name is Fulvius! Fearful, however, is the punishment that
overhangs thee! think on that, Aulus! and if shame fetter not thy tongue,
at least let terror freeze it."
"Terror? of whom? perhaps of thee, accursed?"
"Aulus. Thou hast—a father!"
At that word father, his eyes dropped instantly, their haughty insolence
abashed; his face turned deadly pale; his tongue _was_ frozen; he spoke no
word again until at an early hour of morning, they reached the house he
had so fatally dishonored.
Meanwhile, as the party, who had captured him, returned slowly with their
prisoner down the mountain side, the last of the rebels having gallopped
off long before to join the swordsmith and his gang, the boy, who took so
deep an interest in Julia, dismounted from the white horse, which had
borne him for so many hours with unabated fire and spirit, and leaving the
high road, turned into a glade among the holm oaks, watered by a small
streamlet, leading his courser by the rein.
Having reached a secluded spot, quite removed from sight of the highway,
he drew from a small wallet, which was attached to the croupe, some pieces
of coarse bread and a skin of generous wine, of which he partook sparingly
himself, giving by far the larger portion to his four-footed friend, who
greedily devoured the cake saturated with the rich grape-juice.
This done he fastened the beast to a tree so that he could both graze and
drink from the stream; and then throwing himself down at length on the
grass, he soon fell into a heavy and quiet sleep.
It was already sunset, when he awoke, and the gray hues of night were
gathering fast over the landscape; but he seemed to care nothing for the
approaching darkness as he arose reinvigorated and full of spirit, and
walked up to his horse which whinnied his joyful recognition, and tossed
his long thin mane with a spirited and fiery air, as he felt the
well-known hand clapping his high arched crest.
"Courage! brave horse," he cried—"Courage, White Ister. We will yet save
her, for—Arvina!"
And, with the words he mounted, and cantered away through the gloom of the
woodland night, on the road toward Bolsena, well assured of the route
taken by Caius Crispus and his infernal crew.