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126 to find anyone so vile, anyone so abandoned, anyone so like yourself, as to deny that I am justified in the act. So long as there is anyone left to plead for you, you shall live; and you shall live, as you live now, hemmed in by my guards—many and trusty they are—so that you cannot stir a finger against the State: the eyes and ears of many, when you least suspect it, shall in the future as in the past spy out your ways and keep watch on your actions."

If Catiline wishes to keep up the farce for a few hours longer and to represent himself as an innocent man driven friendless into exile by the threats of the consul, Cicero will humour him so far. "Go," he says, "I order you; go into banishment, if that is what you want me to say. And if," he continues, "you wish to blast the name of me, whom you are pleased to call your enemy, withdraw in very truth into some distant land. I shall scarcely be able to survive the ill-fame which will attach to me, if you allow yourself to be driven from the country by the command of the consul. But if you wish to be the instrument of my praise and my reputation, then set forth with all your crew of reprobates, betake yourself to Manlius, summon all criminals to your standard, sever yourself from every honest man, declare war against your country, glory in the act of impiety, that it may be clear that you have not been thrust forth among strangers, but that you have sought the company of your fellows. You will go at last," he