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23 Parmi les conjurés figurait Q. Curius, d'une famille assez distinguée, mais pourri de vices et de crimes, et que les censeurs avaient, pour indignité, chassé du sénat. C'était une nature non moins légère qu'audacieuse ; il était incapable de garder pour lui ce qu'il avait appris, même de tenir cachés ses propres crimes et de peser ses paroles et ses actions.
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When Cicero sat down, Catiline, being prepared to pretend ignorance of the whole matter, entreated, with downcast looks and suppliant voice, that “the Conscript Fathers would not too hastily believe anything against him;” saying “that he was sprung from such a family, and had so ordered his life from his youth, as to have every happiness in prospect; and that they were not to suppose that he, a patrician, whose services to the Roman people, as well as those of his ancestors, had been so numerous, should want to ruin the state, where Marcus Tullius, a mere adopted citizen of Rome, was eager to preserve it.” When he was proceeding to add other invectives, they all raised an outcry against him, and called him an enemy and a traitor. Being thus exasperated, “Since I am encompassed by enemies,” he exclaimed, “and driven to desperation, I will extinguish the flame kindled around me in a general ruin.”
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