Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/219

 old grudges and getting even for old slights. You bat-blind idiots, you're worse off than the man in the fable, who dug a pit to snare his enemy, found himself trapped in it and starved to death there; you're worse off than the slave in the old joke who sat on a limb of a tree and sawed it off between himself and the tree trunk. You're in the position of the carpenter in the comedy who lay down drunk to sleep in his own shavings and drowsed off giggling while he set fire to them to spite the saddler next door. You've got up a beautiful plan to discredit Pompey and what does the plan amount to? To ruin him you have arranged to put the city at the mercy of the one thing worse than a plundering army of foreign savages, and that's a frenzied mob of indignant soldiers. You've got up a scheme for the massacre of all the notable families of Rome, men, women and children alike. Incidentally you two are certain to be butchered in the first outbreak, along with every other man of importance who happens to be in camp when the row starts. Yes and all the women visitors too. The soldiers will butcher every lady and gentleman in sight. You two and I will be among the first killed. Yes and Mucia besides."

"A nice mess you've led me into, Clodius," Crassus gloomed.