1What fear was thereby struck into all good men, and how great would have been the despair for the state if he had been elected, do not ask me to remind you; 1recall it yourselves in your own minds. 1For you remember, when the words of that wicked gladiator had spread abroad, which he was said to have uttered at a meeting in his own house, when he had said that no faithful defender of the wretched could be found except one who was himself wretched; 1that the wounded and wretched ought not to trust the promises of the sound and fortunate; 1and so those who wished to refill what they had squandered and recover what had been taken from them should look at what he himself owed, what he possessed, what he dared; 1that the man who was to be the leader and standard-bearer of the ruined ought to be not at all timid and thoroughly ruined himself.
51Then, therefore, when these things had been heard, you remember that a decree of the senate was passed, on my motion, that the elections should not be held the next day, so that we might discuss these matters in the senate. 51And so on the following day, in a full senate, I called upon Catiline and bade him say, if he wished, anything about these matters which had been reported to me. 51And he, open as he always was, did not clear himself but revealed and ensnared himself. 51For he then said that there were two bodies in the state, one feeble with a weak head, the other strong but without a head; 51that this one, if it so deserved of him, would not lack a head while he lived.
51The full senate groaned, and yet did not decree with the severity the outrage deserved; 51for some were not firm in decreeing because they feared nothing, others because they feared everything. 51He burst out of the senate exulting with joy, a man who ought never to have left that place alive at all, especially since that same man, in the same body, a few days before, had answered Cato, a most courageous man, who was threatening and giving notice of a prosecution, that if any fire was kindled against his fortunes, he would put it out not with water but with demolition.