The decemvir, as if he had lost his reason owing to his passion, stated that not only from Icilius's abusive harangue of the day before, and the violence of Verginius, of which he could produce the entire Roman people as witnesses, but from authentic information also he had ascertained that secret meetings were held in the city throughout the night with the object of stirring up sedition: that he, accordingly, being aware of that danger, had come down with armed soldiers, not to molest any peaceable person, but in order to punish, as the majesty of the government demanded, those who disturbed the tranquility of the state. "It will, therefore," said he, "be better to remain quiet: go, lictor, disperse the crowd, and clear the way for the master to lay hold of his slave." After he had thundered out these words, full of wrath, the multitude of their own accord dispersed, and the girl stood deserted, a sacrifice to injustice. Then Verginius, when he saw no aid anywhere, said: "I beg you, Appius, first pardon a father's grief, if I have attacked you too harshly: in the next place, suffer me to ask the nurse here in presence of the maiden, what all this means, that, if I have been falsely called her father, I may depart hence with mind more tranquil." Permission having been granted, he drew the girl and the nurse aside to the booths near the chapel of Cloacina,[52] which now go by the name of the New Booths:[53] and there, snatching a knife from a butcher, "In this, the only one way I can, my daughter," said he, "do I secure to you your liberty." He then plunged it into the girl's breast, and looking back toward the tribunal, said "With this blood I devote thee,[54] Appius, and thy head!" Appius, aroused by the cry raised at so dreadful a deed, ordered Verginius to be seized. He, armed with the knife, cleared the way whithersoever he went, until, protected by the crowd of persons attending him, he reached the gate. Icilius and Numitorius took up the lifeless body and showed it to the people; they deplored the villainy of Appius, the fatal beauty of the maiden, and the cruel lot of the father.[55] The matrons, following, cried out: Was this the condition of rearing children? Were these the rewards of chastity? And other things which female grief on such occasions suggests, when their complaints are so much the more affecting, in proportion as their grief is more intense from their want of self-control. The men, and more especially Icilius, spoke of nothing but the tribunician power, and the right of appeal to the people which had been taken from them, and gave vent to their indignation in regard to the condition of public affairs.