As to the little story to which I have alluded, it has been told so often since Cicero told it himself, that I am almost ashamed to repeat it. It is, however, too emblematic of the man, gives us too close an insight both into his determination to do his duty and to his pride--conceit, if you will--at having done it, to be omitted. In his speech for Plancius[96] he tells us that by chance, coming direct from Sicily after his Quæstorship, he found himself at Puteoli just at the season when the fashion from Rome betook itself to that delightful resort. He was full of what he had done--how he had supplied Rome with corn, but had done so without injury to the Sicilians, how honestly he had dealt with the merchants, and had in truth won golden opinions on all sides--so much so that he thought that when he reached the city the citizens in a mob would be ready to receive him. Then at Puteoli he met two acquaintances. "Ah," says one to him, "when did you leave Rome? What news have you brought?" Cicero, drawing his head up, as we can see him, replied that he had just returned from his province. "Of course, just back from Africa," said the other. "Not so," said Cicero, bridling in anger--"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it himself--"but from Sicily." Then the other lounger, a fellow who pretended to know everything, put in his word. "Do you not know that our Cicero has been Quæstor at Syracuse?" The reader will remember that he had been Quæstor in the other division of the island, at Lilybæum. "There was no use in thinking any more about it," says Cicero. "I gave up being angry and determined to be like any one else, just one at the waters." Yes, he had been very conceited, and well understood his own fault of character in that respect; but he would not have shown his conceit in that matter had he not resolved to do his duty in a manner uncommon then among Quæstors, and been conscious that he had done it.