At this moment, a party of young and dissipated nobles came swaggering along the road, with their ungirded tunics flowing down to their heels, their long sleeves fringed with purple falling as far as to their wrists, and their curled ringlets floating on their shoulders. Among them, with a bloodshot eye, a pale and haggard face, and a strange terrible expression, half-sullen, half-ashamed, on all his features, as if he fancied that his last night’s disgrace was known to all men, strode Aulus Fulvius, the son of that stern senator. "Your voices! noblemen, your voices!" cried Catiline, laughing with feigned gayety—"Do but your work to-day, and to-night"— "Wine and fair women!" shouted one; but Aulus smiled savagely, and darkly, and answered in one word "Revenge!" Next behind them, came Bassus, the veteran father of the dead eagle-bearer; he who had told so sad a tale of patrician cruelty to Fulvius Flaccus, in the forge. "Why, Bassus, my brave veteran, give me your hand," cried the conspirator, making a forward step to meet him. "For whom vote you to-day, for Murœna and Silanus? Ha?" "For Catiline and justice!" answered the old man, "justice on him who wronged the Eagle-bearer’s child! who sits in the senate even yet, defiled with her pure blood!—the infamous Cornelius!" Another man had paused to listen to these words, and he now interposed, speaking to Bassus, "Verily Catiline is like to do thee justice, my poor Bassus, on a member of the Cornelian house! Is’t Lentulus, I prithee, or Cethegus, on whom thou would’st have justice?" But the old man replied angrily, "The people’s friend shall give the people justice! who ever knew a noble pity or right a poor man?" "Ask Aulus Fulvius"—replied the other, with a sarcastic tone, and a strange smile lighting up his features. "Besides, is not Catiline a noble?" At the word Aulus Fulvius leaped on him like a tiger, with his face crimsoning, and his heart almost bursting with fury. He could not speak for rage, but he seized the man who had uttered those mysterious words by the throat, and brandished a long poniard, extricated in a second’s space from the loose sleeve of his tunic, furiously in the air. As the bright blade flashed in the sunlight, there was a forward rush among the conspirators, who, anxious to avert any casual affray, that might have created a disturbance, would have checked the blow. But their aid would have come too late, had not the man thus suddenly assaulted, by an extraordinary exertion of strength, vigor, and agility, wrenched the dagger from Aulus’ hand, and, tripping him at the same moment with his foot, hurled him upon his back in the dust, which surged up in a great cloud, covering his perfumed hair and snow-white toga, with its filthy and fætid particles.