"_You_ might, for you are young and active. But I am growing old, Paullus, and the gout afflicts my feet, and makes me slower than my years. Will you do so, and mark whither he leads them; and come back, and tell me? You shall find me in Natta’s, the bookseller’s shop, at the corner of the street Argiletum." "Willingly, Sanga," answered the young man. "The rather, if it may profit these poor Gauls anything." "Thou art a good youth, Paullus. The Gods reward it to thee. Remember Natta’s book-shop." "Doubt me not," said Arvina; and he set off at a pace so rapid, as brought him up with those, whom he was pursuing, within ten minutes. The ambassadors, six or eight in number, among whom the old white-headed chief he had observed—when he went with Hortensia and his betrothed, to see their ingress into Rome—together with the young warrior whose haughty bearing he had noticed on that occasion, were most eminent, had been joined by another Roman beside Umbrenus. Him, Paullus recognised at once, for Titus Volturcius, a native and nobleman of Crotona, a Greek city, on the Gulf of Tarentum, although a citizen of Rome. He was a man of evil repute, as a wild debauchee, a gambler, and seducer; and Arvina had observed him more than once in company with Cornelius Lentulus. This led him to suspect, that Sanga was perhaps more accurate in his suspicions, than he himself imagined; and that something might be in progress here, against the republic. He watched them warily, therefore; and soon found an ample confirmation of the worst he imagined, in seeing them enter the house of Decius Brutus, the husband of the beautiful, but infamous Sempronia. It must not be supposed, that the privity of these various individuals to the conspiracy, was accurately known to young Arvina; but he was well aware, that Lentulus and Catiline were sworn friends; and that Sempronia was the very queen of those abandoned and licentious ladies, who were the instigators and rewarders of the young nobles, in their profligacy and their crimes; it did not require, therefore, any wondrous degree of foresight, to see that something dangerous was probably brewing, in this amalgamation of ingredients so incongruous, as Roman nobles and patrician harlots, with wild barbarians from the Gallic highlands. Without tarrying, therefore, longer than to ascertain that he was not mistaken in the house, he hurried back to meet Sanga, at the appointed place, promising himself that not Sanga only, but Cicero himself, should be made acquainted with that which he had discovered so opportunely. The Argiletum was a street leading down from the vegetable mart, which lay just beyond the _Porta Fluminiana_, or river gate, to the banks of the Tiber, at the quays called _pulchrum littus_, or the beautiful shore; it was therefore a convenient place of meeting for persons who had parted company in the forum, particularly when going in that direction, which had been taken by Umbrenus and the Ambassadors.