dreams of one hour are apt to become the fixed ideas of the next, and above all perhaps by the impatience of weakness which, when once men have begun to conspire, makes them feel that suspense is intolerable and that something, no matter what, must be done. To eyes so blinded the occasion seemed not unfavourable. The noble conspirators, though their fortunes were hopelessly undermined, still kept up the show of wealth and profusion, and could command the services of armed slaves, of clients and of retainers. Rome was full as Sallust tells us[1] of fugitive rascals from all the world; the remnant of the sufferers by the last revolution likewise lingered on there in hopeless poverty. These would be ready enough for deeds of bloodshed; and the mass of the populace crowded together in a great city without industry, pauperised by doles of State corn, puffed up with the conceit that they were the masters of the world and yet painfully conscious that they gained little either in comfort or in dignity by their pre-eminence, would, it was thought, welcome a disturbance in which they might hope to gain, while at the worst they had nothing to lose. In the country towns of Italy the conspirators though they might number in their ranks some Italians of good position[2] who had been drawn into the vortex of fashionable life in the capital, would find little favour with the rank and file of the citizens, who were sounder and more industrious than the masses in Rome itself; but they counted that the country-folk
