"Marcius has conquered me," he muttered in tones of deep mortification, unconscious, as it would seem, of his agony, and wounded only by the indomitable Roman pride; and with the words his jaw dropped, and his last strife was ended. "The fool!" exclaimed Cataline, with a bitter sneer; "what had he got to do, that he should ride against Caius Marcius, when he could not so much as keep his saddle, the fool!" "He is gone!" cried another; "game to the last, brave Varus!" "He came of a brave race," said a third; "but he rode badly!" "At least not so well as Marcius," replied yet a fourth; "but who does? To be foiled by him does not argue bad riding." "Who does? why Paullus, here," cried Aurelius Victor; "I’ll match him, if he will ride, for a thousand sesterces—ten thousand, if you will." "No! I’ll not bet about it. I lost by this cursed chance," answered the former speaker; "but Varus did not ride badly, I maintain it!" he added, with the steadiness of a discomfited partisan. "Ay! but he did, most pestilently," interposed Catiline, almost fiercely; "but come, come, why don’t they carry him away? we are losing all the morning." "I thought he was a friend of yours, Sergius," said another of the bystanders, apparently vexed at the heartlessness of his manner. "Why, ay! so he was," replied the conspirator; "but he is nothing now: nor can my friendship aught avail him. It was his time and his fate! ours, it may be, will come to-morrow. Nor do I see at all wherefore our sports should not proceed, because a man has gone hence. Fifty men every day die somewhere, while we are dining, drinking, kissing our mistresses or wives; but do we stop for that? Ho! bear him hence, we will attend his funeral, when it shall be soever; and we will drink to his memory to-day. What comes next, comrades?" Arvina, it is true, was for a moment both shocked and disgusted at the heartless and unfeeling tone; but few if any of the others evinced the like tenderness; for it must be remembered, in the first place, that the Romans, inured to sights of blood and torture daily in the gladiatorial fights of the arena, were callous to human suffering, and careless of human life at all times; and, in the second, that Stoicism was the predominant affectation of the day, not only among the rude and coarse, but among the best and most virtuous citizens of the republic. Few, therefore, left the ground, when the corpse, decently enveloped in the toga he had worn when living, was borne homewards; except the involuntary homicide, who could not even at that day in decency remain, and a few of his most intimate associates, who covering their faces in the lappets of their gowns, followed the bearers in stern and silent sorrow. Scarcely then had the sad procession threaded the marble archway, before Catiline again asked loudly and imperiously, "What is to be the next, I pray you? are we to sit here like old women by their firesides, croaking and whimpering till dinner time?"