A singular incident happened, in the midst of these debates, to show to what point Cæsar had awakened people’s suspicions. At the most animated moment of the discussion, a letter was brought to him. He read it with eagerness. Cato and other senators, supposing it to be a message from one of the conspirators, insisted upon its being read to the Senate. Cæsar handed the letter to Cato, who was seated near him. The latter saw it was a love-letter from his sister Servilia, and threw it back indignantly, crying out, “There! keep it, drunkard!”[972] a gratuitous insult, since he himself did justice to the temperance of Cæsar the day when he said that, of all the men who had overthrown the State, he was the only one who had done it fasting.[973] Cato expressed with still greater force the fears of his party when he said: “If, in the midst of such great and general alarms, Cæsar alone is without fear, it is for you as well as me an additional motive for fear.”[974] Cato went further. After the condemnation of the accused to death, he tried to drive Cæsar to extremities by turning against them an opinion which the latter had expressed in their interest: he proposed to confiscate their goods. The debate became then warmer than ever. Cæsar declared that it was an indignity, after having rejected the humane part of his opinion, to adopt from it the rigorous spirit it contained, for the purpose of aggravating the lot of the condemned and adding to their punishment.[975] As his protestation met with no echo in the Senate, he adjured the tribunes to use their right of intercession, but they remained deaf to his appeal. The agitation was at its height, and to put an end to it, the consul, in haste to terminate a struggle the issue of which might become doubtful, agreed that the confiscation should not form a part of the _Senatus-consultum_.
Whilst the populace outside, excited by the friends of the conspirators, raised seditious clamours, the knights who formed the guard around the Temple of Concord, exasperated by the language of Cæsar and the length of the debates, broke in upon the assembly; they surrounded Cæsar, and with threatening words, despite his rank of pontiff and of prætor-elect, they drew their swords upon him, which M. Curio and Cicero generously turned aside.[976] Their protection enabled him to regain his home: he declared, however, that he would not appear again in the Senate until the new consuls could ensure order and liberty for the deliberations.