480 Recollections of a Night of Fever. May, 
In the midst of this swelling pageant, and while the temples were yet 
reeking with incense, I was sensible, though I knew not why, that I had 
become the object of general awe and hatred. Men scowled as they 
passed by me, and drew their garments more closely to them, to avoid 
the contamination of my nearness, as if I had carried plague and pesti- 
lence in my touch ; or else turned pale with terror, and hurried on, as 
they would have fled from the path of the aspic: Still I kept on my way 
without stop or question, the startling crowd dividing before me like 
water before the prow of a vessel when the gale is at the highest, till I 
found myself in the senate-house. A general murmur arose at my 
appearance, and all simultaneously started up from the bench on which 
I had seated myself, and passed over to the opposite side, where Cato 
sate lowering hatred and defiance, and Cicero was watching me with his 
keen, eagle eyes, while his whole frame trembled with visible emotion. 
I knew that I was Catiline, with the will to be lord of the city, or to lay 
it in ruins—I recked not which—and the dread and loathing I inspired 
were sweeter to me than flattery. Rome, that feared nothing else, feared 
me. I rejoiced that it was so; I could have laughed, but for prudence, 
at the majestic horrors of Cato—the doubtful brow of Cesar, who loved 
the treason, though he shrank from its danger—and the spare face of the | 
consul, bleached with his midnight terrors, and not yet seeming quite 
assured of his safety, even when bucklered round by his friends. But 
even then, while my heart was swelling with present and expected 
triumph, the orator arose and thundered in my ears the terrible “ Quo- 
usque tandem, Catilina ;” and a thousand voices re-echoed with deafening _ 
roar, “ Quousque tandem—quousque tandem!” It was like the unholy — 
spell of some wizzard. The images of the gods, the marbles of the — 
illustrious dead, in temple and in porch, in the forum and in the conait 
all at that sound became instinct with life, and cried out with the’ pale 
orator, “ Quousque—quousque !” I endeavoured to reply, to defend 
myself, to hurl back defiance on the wretched peasant of Arpinum, who ~ 
had dared to brand a Roman and a noble; but my voice was no more, 
amidst the tumult, than the voice of a child would be to the cataract or 
the ravings of the tempest. I was stunned, beaten to the earth, by the — 
mighty congregation of sounds; my eyes dazzled ; my brain shook ; ~ 
and down I toppled—down—down—a precipice as deep as from heaven | 
to earth, catching at every thing in the long descent to break my fall. 
But all was in vain: the stoutest oaks snapped under my grasp like the — 
dried reeds of autumn ; the ponderous masses of jutting rock sank from 
my tread like hills of sand. The weight of some strange crime was upon 
me ; and, loaded as I was, nothing was so stout it could give my foot a— 
resting-place. 
Unconsciousness, or sleep, its counterfeit, dropt a curtain between me 
and this stage of suffering, and again the shadows of my delirium took — 
another form. I was ina spacious theatre, where the earlier events of 
the French revolution were being represented, till, by degrees, that 
which at first had been no more than a show, became reality ; and I, who 
had only been a spectaror, was converted into an actor, and called upo 
to do and suffer. Sometimes I paraded the streets with the infuriate 
mob, shouting “ Ca ira” and the Marseillois Hymn; while, at others 
I was the doomed object of popular hatred, and had a thousand hait 
breadth escapes from the guillotine, which was going on incessantly by 
night and day, till the kennels ran with gore, and Paris had the look and 
