about twelve o’clock at night
The people and the Senate , who had all , for a time , been vehemently agitated by a thousand various emotions of anger , fear , anxiety , revenge , forgetting , as all popular bodies are wont to do , the past danger in the present security , were beginning to doubt whether they had not been alarmed at a shadow ; and were half inclined to question the existence of any conspiracy , save in the fears of their Consul . It was well for Rome at that hour , that there was still in the commonwealth , a counterpoise to the Democratic Spirit ; which , vehement and energetical beyond all others in sudden and great emergencies , is ever restless and impatient of protracted watchfulness and preparation , and lacks that persistency and resolute endurance which seems peculiar to aristocratic constitutions . And now especially were demonstrated these opposite characteristics ; for while the lower orders , and the popular portion of the Senate , who had been in the first instance most strenuous in their alarm , and most urgent for strong measures , were now hesitating , doubting , and almost compassionating the culprits , who had fallen under such a load of obloquy , the firmer and more moderate minds , were guarding the safety of the commonwealth in secret , and watching , through their unknown emissaries , every movement of the traitors . It was about twelve o'clock at night , on the eighth day before the Ides , corresponding to our seventh of November , when the Consul was seated alone in the small but sumptuous library , which has been described above , meditating with an anxious and care-worn expression , over some papers which lay before him on the table . No sound had been heard in the house for several hours ; all its inhabitants except the Consul only , with the slave who had charge of the outer door , and one faithful freedman , having long since retired to rest . But from without , the wailing of the stormy night-wind rose and fell in melancholy alternations of wild sobbing sound , and breathless silence ; and the pattering of heavy rain was distinctly audible on the flat roofs , and in the flooded tank , or _ impluvium _ , which occupied the centre of the hall . It was in one of the lulls of the autumnal storm , that a heavy knock was heard on the pannel of the exterior door , reverberating in long echoes , through the silent vestibule , and the vast colonnades of the Atrium and peristyle .