Twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken--twenty-four days during which Rome must have been in a state of very great fever. Cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he made that speech for Murena before the judicial bench of which I gave an account in the last chapter, and also probably another for Piso, of which we have nothing left. We cannot but marvel that he should have been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and carefully to study all the details of legal cases. It was only on October 21st that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery. There is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes. On the same day, the 20th of November, when Cicero was defending Murena, the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain Roman lady named Sempronia. It was she of whom Sallust said that she danced better than became an honest woman. If we can believe Sallust, she was steeped in luxury and vice. At her house a most vile project was hatched for introducing into Rome Rome's bitterest foreign foes. There were in the city at this time certain delegates from a people called the Allobroges, who inhabited the lower part of Savoy. The Allobroges were of Gaulish race. They were warlike, angry, and at the present moment peculiarly discontented with Rome. There had been certain injuries, either real or presumed, respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city. There they had been delayed, and fobbed off with official replies which gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil possible to the Republic. What if they could be got to go back suddenly to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired Gauls to assist the conspirators in burning down Rome? A deputation from the delegates came to Sempronia's house and there met the conspirators--Lentulus and others. They entered freely into the project; but having, as was usual with foreign embassies at Rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own among the aristocracy, one Fabius Sanga by name, they thought it well to consult him.[203] Sanga, as a matter of course, told everything to our astute Consul.