"Pardon me, ye Gods of our house, for this dishonor which I have brought upon you; absolve me, ye grand ancestors; mine eyes are open now, and I perceive the sin, the shame, the sorrow of my deeds! Absolve me, ye great Gods, and ye glorious men; and thou, my father, think sometimes of the son, whom it repented of his guilt, but whom it pained not"—he raised his arm aloft, and the bright knife-blade glittered in the rays of the altar-fire, when the old Senator sprang forward, with all his features working strangely, and cried "Hold!" It might be that he had relented; but if it were so, it was too late; for, finishing his interrupted sentence with these words— —"to die for his house’s honor!"— the young man struck himself one quick blow on the breast, with a hand so sure and steady, that the knife pierced through his ribs as if they had been paper, and clove his heart asunder, standing fixed hilt-deep in his chest; while, without word, or groan, or sigh or struggle, he dropped flat on his back beside the _impluvium_, and was dead in less time than it has taken to describe the deed. The father looked on for a moment calmly; and then said in a cool hard voice, "It is well! it is well! The Gods be thanked! he died as a Roman should!" Then he composed his limbs, and threw a white cloth which lay nigh the block, over the face and body of the wretched youth. But, as he turned to leave the atrium, nature was too strong for his philosophy, for his pride; and crying out, "My son! my son! He was yet mine own son! mine own Aulus!" and burying his face in his toga, he burst into a paroxysm of loud grief, and threw himself at length on the dead body: father and son victims alike to the inexorable Roman honor! CHAPTER XIII. THE DOOM. Without debatement further, more or less, He should the bearers put to sudden death, Not striving time allowed. HAMLET. The nones(11) of November were perilous indeed to Rome. The conspirators, arrested two days previously, and fully convicted on the evidence of the Gaulish ambassadors, of Titus Volturcius of Crotona, and of Lucius Tarquinius,—convicted on the evidence of their own letters—and lastly convicted by their own admissions, were yet uncondemned and in free custody, as it was termed; under the charge of certain senators and magistrates, whose zeal for the republic was undoubted. There was still in the city a considerable mass of men, turbulent, disaffected, ripe for tumult—there was still in the Senate a large party, not indeed favorable to the plot, but far from being unfavorable to the plotters,—Catiline was at the head of a power which had increased already to nearly the force of two legions, and was in full march upon Rome.