"Ha! my friends!" he exclaimed, with an unaltered mien and voice, "We are met once again. But we seem not, by all the Gods! to be well pleased with the meeting. Why so downcast, Cethegus?" "Because on earth it is our last meeting," he replied. And it was clear to see that the boldest and fiercest, and most furious of the band, while danger was afar, was the most utterly appalled now, when fate appeared imminent and certain. "Why, then!" answered Lentulus, "we shall meet in Hell, Cethegus." "By the Gods! jest not so foully—" "Wherefore not, I prithee? If that this be our last meeting, good faith! let it be a merry one! I know not, for my part, what ails ye all." "Are you mad? or know you not that Volturcius is a prisoner, and our letters in the hands of the consul? They will kill us ere noon." "Then they must make haste, Caius. It is noon already. But, cheer thee up, be not so much afraid, my brave Cethegus—they dare not slay us." "Dare not?" "For their own lives, they dare not!" But as he spoke, raising his voice to its highest pitch, the curtains which closed the other end of the Tablinum were suddenly drawn back, and Cicero appeared, clad in his consular robes, and with his ivory staff in his hand. Antonius his colleague stood in the intercolumniation, with all the lictors at his back, and many knights in their appropriate tunics, but with military cloaks above them in place of the peaceful toga, and with their swords girded by their sides. "Prætor," said Cicero in a dignified but serene voice, with no show of taunting or of triumph over his fallen enemy. "The Senate is assembled in the temple of Concord. The Fathers wait but for your coming. Give me your hand that I may conduct you thither." "My hand, consul? Not as a friend’s, I trust," said the undaunted Traitor. "As a magistrate’s, Cornelius Lentulus," replied Cicero severely, "whose hand, even if guilty, may not be polluted by an inferior’s grasp." "As a magistrate’s you have it, consul. We go?" "To the shrine of Concord! Antonius, my noble colleague, let us begone. Senators, follow us; escape you cannot, if you would; and I would spare you the disgrace of chains." "We follow, Cicero," answered Cethegus in a hollow voice, and casting his eyes with a wild and haggard expression on Gabinius, he added in a whisper, "to our death!" "Be it so!" replied the other. "One can but die once; and if his time be come, as well now as hereafter. I fear not death now, when I see it face to face. I think, I have heard thee say the same." "He spoke," answered Statilius, with a bitter and sarcastic laugh, "of the death of others then. Would God, he _then_ had met his own! So should we _now_ have been innocent and fearless!" "I at least, if not innocent, _am_ fearless."