The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) - The UK Mirror Service

THE MEASURES 19
THE MEASURES.
For what then do they pause?
An hour to strike.
MARINO FALIERO.
The hours of darkness had already well nigh passed, and but
for the thick storm-clouds and the drizzling rain, some streaks
of early dawn might have been seen on the horizon, when at
the door of Marcus Læca, in the low grovelling street of the
Scythemakers—strange quarter for the residence of a patrician,
one of the princely Porcii—the arch-conspirator stood still, and
glared around with keen suspicious eyes, after his hurried walk.
It was, however, yet as black as midnight; nor in that wretched
and base suburb, tenanted only by poor laborious artizans, was
there a single artificial light to relieve the gloom of nature.
The house of Læca! How little would the passer-by who
looked in those days on its walls, decayed and moss-grown even
then, and mouldering—how little would he have imagined that
its fame would go down to the latest ages, imperishable through
its owner's infamy.
The house of Læca! The days had been, while Rome was yet
but young, when it stood far aloof in the gay green fields, the
suburban villa of the proud Porcian house. Time passed, and
fashions changed. Low streets and squalid tenements supplanted
the rich fields and fruitful orchards, which had once rendered it
so pleasant an abode. Its haughty lords abandoned it for a more
stately palace nigh the forum, and for long years it had remained [26]
tenantless, voiceless, desolate. But dice, and wine, and women,
mad luxury and boundless riot, had brought its owner down to
indigence, and infamy and sin.