"HABET!--he hath it!" muttered Cataline, quoting the well-known expression of the gladiatorial strife; "he hath it!--but all the plagues of Erebus, light on it--my good stiletto lies near to him in the swart darkness, to testify against me; nor by great Hecate! is there one chance to ten of finding it. Well! be it so!" he added, turning upon his heel, "be it so, for most like it hath fallen in the deep long grass, where none will ever find it; and if they do, I care not!"
And with a reckless and unmoved demeanor, well pleased with his success, and casting not one retrospective thought toward his murdered victim, not one repentant sigh upon his awful crime, he too hurried away to join his dread associates at their appointed meeting.
For what then do they pause? An hour to strike. MARINO FALIERO.
The hours of darkness had already well nigh passed, and but for the thick storm-clouds and the drizzling rain, some streaks of early dawn might have been seen on the horizon, when at the door of Marcus Læca, in the low grovelling street of the Scythemakers--strange quarter for the residence of a patrician, one of the princely Porcii--the arch-conspirator stood still, and glared around with keen suspicious eyes, after his hurried walk.
It was, however, yet as black as midnight; nor in that wretched and base suburb, tenanted only by poor laborious artizans, was there a single artificial light to relieve the gloom of nature.
The house of Læca! How little would the passer-by who looked in those days on its walls, decayed and moss-grown even then, and mouldering--how little would he have imagined that its fame would go down to the latest ages, imperishable through its owner's infamy.
The house of Læca! The days had been, while Rome was yet but young, when it stood far aloof in the gay green fields, the suburban villa of the proud Porcian house. Time passed, and fashions changed. Low streets and squalid tenements supplanted the rich fields and fruitful orchards, which had once rendered it so pleasant an abode. Its haughty lords abandoned it for a more stately palace nigh the forum, and for long years it had remained tenantless, voiceless, desolate. But dice, and wine, and women, mad luxury and boundless riot, had brought its owner down to indigence, and infamy and sin.