“I will not, Quintus,” and that was all she could be heard to say in the din.

And so the little cavalcade drove forth.  Cornelia cowered in the chariot and saw nothing and heard everything, which was the same as nothing.  Was she frightened?  She did not know.  The peril was awful.  Of course she realized that; but how could calamity come to pass, when it was Drusus whose powerful form towered above her, when it was Drusus whose voice rang like a trumpet out into the press swaying around?

It was very dark crouching in the body of the chariot.  She could just see the face of Fabia opposite, very white, but, she knew, very calm.  She reached out and caught the Vestal’s hand, and discovered that her own was trembling, while the other’s was perfectly steady.  But the contest, the fighting all about!  Now the horses were dashing forward, making the chariot spring as though it were a thing of life; now reined in sharply, and the heavily loaded car swayed this way and that, almost to overturning.  The uproar above her head passed the telling by words; but there was one shout, now in Greek, now in Egyptian, that drowned all others:  “Death to the Romans! tear them in pieces!” Missiles smote against the chariot; an arrow went cutting into the wood, driving its keen point home, and Cornelia experienced a thrill of pain in her shoulder.  She felt for the smart, found the mere tip of the point only had penetrated the wood; but her fingers were wet when she took them away.  Drusus was shooting; his bow-string snapped and snapped.  Once a soldier in armour sprang behind the chariot when it came to a stop, and his javelin was poised to discharge; but an arrow tore through his throat, and he went down to the pavement with a crash.  The car rocked more and more; once the wheels slipped without revolving, as though sliding over some smooth liquid—­not water.  Cornelia felt powers of discriminating sensation becoming fainter and fainter; a great force seemed pressing out from within her; the clamour and shocks were maddening.  She felt driven to raise her head, to look out into the raging chaos, though the first glance were death.  Peering back out of the body of the chariot now and then, she saw a little.  The Romans were charging this way and that, forcing their passage down the street, barred no longer by a mere mob, but by Achillas’s infantrymen, who were hastening into action.  The chariot horses were wounded, some seriously; she was sure of that.  They could not be driven through the spearmen, and the little handful of cavalry was trying to break through the enemy and make space for a rush.  It was thirty against thousands; yet even in the mortal peril, which Cornelia realized now if she had never before, she had a strange sort of pride.  Her countrymen were showing these Orientals how one Roman could slay his tens, could put in terror his hundreds.  Drusus was giving orders with the same mechanical exactitude of the drill, albeit his voice was high-pitched and strained—­not entirely, perhaps, because of the need of calling above the din.