The officer on duty, who had arrested the attention of the nurse, being at length called away by some trifling charge, had left her at leisure to look after the more precious charge with which she had been entrusted. As those usually talk the loudest who do the least, the remonstrances of the female attendant were, no doubt, vehement in proportion to her neglect; and, indeed, the confusion created by the shrieks of the nurse was rather calculated to draw off the attention of the crowd from Virginia herself, who was carried away by Marcus, with an intimation that he should at once take the case before a magistrate. Among the other consequences of the neglect of the maid, was an attachment that had sprung up between the day-school miss and a young gentleman, named Icilius. This impetuous youth, having heard of what had happened, proceeded to the court at which the case was about to come on, and which was presided over by the tyrant Appius. Icilius prayed for an adjournment, on the ground of the absence of the young lady's father; and it was found impossible to resist the application of such an earnest solicitor. This point having been conceded, the friends of Virginia applied for her admission to bail; and there was such a general tender of securities among the throng, that Appius felt he could not calculate on his own security if he refused the request that had been made to him. The next morning the matter again came on, in the shape of a remanded case; and Virginius, who had been on duty with his regiment the day before, was now present at the hearing. Had there been in those days the same love of the horrible that has prevailed in our own times, the startling incident of a girl killed by her own father, would have probably come down to us, through the medium of the fullest reports, amplified by "other accounts," and a long succession of "latest particulars." We must, however, on the present occasion, be satisfied with the merest summary; for the Romans, in the time of Appius, were equally destitute of relish for the details of the spilling of blood, and of "family Sunday newspapers," whose respectable proprietors are always ready to avail themselves of a sanguinary affair, with an eagerness that seems to show that they look upon blood as essential to the vitality of a journal, and involving the true theory of the circulation. It remains only to be told, that Virginius, after taking leave of his daughter, and finding her escape from the power of Appius impossible, stabbed her with a knife, snatched up from a butcher's stall, and, brandishing the weapon in the air, threatened perdition to the tyrant. Appius, at the sight of the blood-stained steel, felt his heart fluttering, as if affected by magnetic influence; and losing, for the time, his own head, he offered ten thousand pounds of copper for that of Virginius.[21]