"Sometimes I think," the girl answered wildly, "that there are _no_ Gods, Paullus. Do you believe in Mars and Venus?" "In Gods, whose worship were adultery and murder?" said Arvina. "Not I, indeed, poor Lucia." "If these be Gods, there is no truth, no meaning in the name of virtue. If not these, what is God?" "All things!" replied the young man solemnly. "Whatever moves, whatever _is_, is God. The universe is but the body, that clothes his eternal spirit; the winds are his breath; the sunshine is his smile; the gentle dews are the tears of his compassion! Time is the creature of his hand, eternity his dwelling place, virtue his law, his oracles the soul of every living man!" "Beautiful," cried the girl. "Beautiful, if it were but true!" "It is true—as true, as the sun in heaven; as certain as his course through the changeless seasons." "How? how?" she asked eagerly. "What makes it certain?" "The certainty of death!" he answered. "Ah! death, death! that is a mystery indeed. And after that—" "Everlasting life!" "Ha! do you believe that too? They tell me all that is a fable, a folly, and a falsehood!" "Perchance it would be well for them it were so." "Yes!" she replied. "Yes! But who taught you?" "Plato! Immortal Plato!" "Ha! I will read him; I will read Plato." "What! do you understand Greek too, Lucia?" "How else should I have sung Anacreon, and learned the Lesbian arts of Sappho? But we have strayed wide of our subject, and time presses. Will you denounce, me, Catiline?" "Not I! I will perish sooner." "You will do so, and all Rome with you." "Prove that to me, and——But it is impossible." "Prove that to you, will you denounce him?" "I will save Rome!" "Will you denounce him?" "If otherwise, I may preserve my country, no." "Otherwise, you cannot. Speak! will you?" "I must know all." "You shall. Mark me, then judge." And rapidly, concisely, clearly, she revealed to him the dread secret. She concealed nothing, neither the ends of the conspiracy, nor the names of the conspirators. She asseverated to him the appalling fact, that half the noblest, eldest families of Rome, were either active members of the plot, sworn to spare no man, or secret well-wishers, content at first to remain neutral, and then to share the spoils of empire. According to her shewing, the Curii, the Portii, the Syllæ, the Cethegi, the great Cornelian house, the Vargunteii, the Autronii, and the Longini, were all for the most part implicated, although some branches of the Portian and Cornelian houses had not been yet approached by the seducers. Crassus, she told him too, the richest citizen of Rome, and Caius Julius Cæsar, the most popular, awaited but the first success to join the parricides of the Republic. He listened thoughtfully, earnestly, until she had finished her narration, and then shook his head doubtfully.