And watched on every side by the knights, and followed by the lictors, two behind each, the ringleaders of the plot, all save Cæparius who had fled, and Catiline—who was in open arms, an outlaw and proclaimed enemy of his country—the ringleaders were led away to trial. The fate of Rome hung on the firmness of their judges. CHAPTER XI. THE YOUNG PATRICIAN. Not always robes of state are worn, Most nobly by the nobly born. H. W. H. The light of that eventful morning, which broke, pregnant with ruin to the conspiracy, found Aulus Fulvius and his band, still struggling among the rugged defiles which it was necessary to traverse, in order to gain the Via Cassia or western branch of the Great North Road. It had been necessary to make a wide circuit, in order to effect this, inasmuch as the Latin road, of which the Labican way was a branch, left the city to the South-eastward, nearly opposite to the Flaminian, or north road, so that the two if prolonged would have met in the forum, and made almost a right line. Nor had this been their only difficulty, for they had been compelled to avoid all the villages and scattered farm houses, which lay on their route, in the fear that Julia’s outcries and resistance—for she frequently succeeded in removing the bandage from her mouth—would awaken suspicion and cause their arrest, while in the immediate vicinity of Rome. At one time, the party had been within a very few miles of the city, passing over the Tiber, scarce five miles above the Mulvian bridge, about an hour before the arrest of the ambassadors; and it was from this point, that Aulus sent off his messenger to Lentulus, announcing his success, thereby directly disobeying the commands of Catiline, who had enjoined it on him almost with his last words, to communicate this enterprise to none of his colleagues in guilt. Crossing the Flaminian, or great northern road, they had found a relay of fresh horses, stationed in a little grove, of which by this time they stood greatly in need, and striking across the country, at length reached the Cassian road, near the little river Galera, just as the sun rose above the eastern hills. At this moment they had not actually effected above ten miles of their journey, as reckoned from the gates of Rome to the camp of Catiline, which was nearly two hundred miles distant, though they had traversed nearly forty during the night, in their wearisome but unavoidable circuit. They were, however, admirably mounted on fresh horses, and had procured a _cisium_, or light carriage for two persons, not much unlike in form to a light gig, in which they had placed the unhappy Julia, with a slight boy, the son of Caius Crispus, as the driver.