"Lucius Catiline to Quintus Catulus, sends health. Your most distinguished faith, known by experience, gives me in mighty perils a grateful confidence, thus to address you. Since I have resolved to prepare no defence in the new steps which I have taken, I am resolved to set forth my apology, conscious to myself of no crime, which—So may the God of Honor guard me!—you may rely upon as true. Goaded by injury and insult, robbed of the guerdon of my toils and industry, that state of dignity at which I aimed, I publicly have undertaken, according to my wont, the cause of the unhappy and oppressed; not because I am unable to pay all debts contracted on my own account, from my own property—from those incurred in behalf of others, the generosity of Orestilla and her daughter, by their treasures, would have released me—but because I saw men honored who deserve no honor, and felt myself disgraced, on false suspicion. On this plea, I now take measures, honorable in my circumstances, for preserving that dignity which yet remains to me. I would have written more, but I learn that violence is about to be offered me. Now I commend to you Orestilla, and trust her to your faith. As you love your own children, shield her from injury. Farewell." This strange letter, intended, as after events evidently proved, to bear a double sense, he had scarce sealed, when Aulus Fulvius was announced. For a few moments after he entered, Catiline continued writing; then handing Chærea, who at a sign had remained in waiting, a list of many names, "Let them," he said, "be here, prepared for a journey, and in arms at the fifth hour. Prepare a banquet of the richest, ample for all these, in the Atrium; in the garden Triclinium, a feast for ten—the rarest meats, the choicest wines, the delicatest perfumes, the fairest slave-girls in most voluptuous attire. At the third hour! See to it! Get thee hence!" The freedman bowed low, and departed on his mission; then turning to the young patrician, "I have sent for you," he said, "the first, noble Aulus, because I hold you the first in honor, bravery, and action; because I believe that you will serve me truly, and to the utmost. Am I deceived?" "Catiline, you have judged aright." "And that you cannot serve me, more gratefully to yourself, than in avenging me on that young pedant, Paullus Arvina." The eyes of the youthful profligate flashed dark fire, and his whole face beamed with intense satisfaction. "By all the Powers of Tartarus!" he cried, "Show me but how, and I will hunt him to the gates of Hades!" Catiline nodded to him, with an approving smile, and after looking around him warily for a minute, as if fearful even of the walls’ overhearing him, he stepped close up to him, and whispered in his ear, for several moments. "Do you conceive me, ha?" he said aloud, when he had ended. "Excellent well!" cried the other in rapturous triumph, "but how gain an opportunity?"