Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/149

63 B.C.] the gleam of a corselet which could be seen between the folds of the consul's civic gown proclaimed his danger to the world. The popular feeling was deeply stirred; Catiline saw that an attack on that day would be hopeless, and kept quiet. The voters gave their voices against him, and Silanus and Murena were elected consuls. Three days later, on the 1st of November, an attempt to surprise the stronghold of Præneste was frustrated by the vigilance of Cicero, who had received intelligence from his spies, and who gave orders that the town should be carefuIly garrisoned and guarded.

Though the forces of his confederates were actually in the field and Catiline had arranged shortly to put himself at their head, he thought proper to occupy the intervening days with a clumsy display of innocence, offering himself to the custody of one magistrate after another, and finally taking up his quarters with Marcus Marcellus, whom he begged to keep watch over his movements. Cicero tells us that down to the time when Catiline actually joined the rebels in Etruria—"there are men in this House, who either do not see what is hanging over us, or seeing it pretend not to see, who have nourished the hopes of Catiline by the mildness of their proposals, and have given strength to the new-born conspiracy by refusing to believe in it; and there are many outside, not only of the bad but of the simple, who have followed their lead, and who, if I had taken extreme