Drusus was silent; the other continued;—­

“Listen, Quintus Drusus.  I do not believe in blind fate.  We were not given wills only to have them broken.  The function of a limb is not to be maimed, nor severed from the body.  A limb is to serve a man; just so a man and his actions are to serve the ends of a power higher and nobler than he.  If he refuse to serve that power, he is like the mortifying limb,—­a thing of evil to be cut off.  And this is true of all of us; we all have some end to serve, we are not created for no purpose.”  Caesar paused.  When he began again it was in a different tone of voice.  “I have brought you with me, because I know you are intelligent, are humane, love your country, and can make sacrifices for her; because you are my friend and to a certain extent share my destiny; because you are too young to have become overprejudiced, and calloused to pet foibles and transgressions.  Therefore I took you with me, having put off the final decision to the last possible instant.  And now I desire your counsel.”

“How can I counsel peace!” replied Drusus, warming to a sense of the situation.  “Is not Italy in the hand of tyrants?  Is not Pompeius the tool of coarse schemers?  Do they not pray for proscriptions and confiscations and abolition of debt?  Will there be any peace, any happiness in life, so long as we call ourselves freemen, yet endure the chains of a despotism worse than that of the Parthians?”

“Ah! amice!” said Caesar, twisting the long limp grass, “every enemy is a tyrant, if he has the upper hand.  Consider, what will the war be?  Blood, the blood of the noblest Romans!  The overturning of time-honoured institutions!  A shock that will make the world to tremble, kings be laid low, cities annihilated!  East, west, north, south—­all involved—­so great has our Roman world become!”

“And are there not wrongs, abuses, Imperator, which cry for vengeance and for righting?” replied Drusus, vehemently.  “Since the fall of Carthage, have not the fears of Scipio AEmilianus almost come true:  Troy has fallen, Carthage has fallen; has not Rome almost fallen, fallen not by the might of her enemies, but by the decay of her morals, the degeneracy of her statesmen?  What is the name of liberty, without the semblance!  Is it liberty for a few mighty families to enrich themselves, while the Republic groans?  Is it liberty for the law courts to have their price, for the provinces to be the farms of a handful of nobles?”

Caesar shook his head.

“You do not know what you say.  This is no moment for declamation.  Every man has his own life to live, his own death to die.  Our intellects cannot assure us of any consciousness the instant that breath has left our bodies.  It is then as if we had never hoped, had never feared; it is rest, peace.  Quintus Drusus, I have dared many things in my life.  I defied Sulla; it was boyish impetuosity.  I took the unpopular and perilous side when Catilina’s