When the wall was built, a little inside this furrow, the wall also would be sacred. Nobody would be allowed to touch it, even to repair it, without the leave of the priest in whose charge it was. On both sides of it, within and without, a space would be left where no plow was used and no building allowed. There was a good practical reason for these rules about the wall, though they were so time-honored that no one gave any thought to that. The danger of a city being taken was considerably lessened, when it was an unheard-of thing for any one to be near the wall for any reason. No spy could get over it without attracting attention. The foundations also would be much less likely to be undermined if the land next them were not used at all.
No human being among the lookers-on who reverently followed the procession around this city that was to be, could have told what thoughts and feelings filled the soul of Romulus. Perhaps he felt the solemnity of it even more than he would if he had been accustomed to all these beliefs from childhood. Things that he had dreamed of, things that he had seen from a distance as an outlaw and a vagabond, were part of the scene in which he was now the central figure. He had the sensitive understanding of others’ feelings and thoughts which a man gains when he has had to depend on his instincts in matters of life and death. The intense reverence and solemn joy of all these grave fathers of families, these gentle and kindly women, these children with their wide, wondering eyes, and the youths and maidens in all their springtime gladness were like wine of the spirit to him. He felt as they felt, and all the more because it was so new and strange a thing in his life. The very words of the chant, the smell of the earth as the plowshare turned it, had a sort of magic for him. It was exciting enough for those who looked on, but their feeling was gathered in his, like light in a burning glass.
When the circle was all but completed something happened which no one could have foreseen. Remus had followed all that was done with a rather mocking light in his eye. He did not believe in the least what these people believed. Suddenly he stepped past the others, and with a jeering laugh leaped across the furrow. If he had stabbed his brother to the heart, it could not have made more of a sensation. It was a deliberate, wilful insult to everything that religion meant to these people. All Romulus’ hot temper and his new reverence for the ways of his forefathers blazed up in an instant, and he struck his brother to the earth with a blow. Even one single blow from his hard fist was not an experience to be coveted, but Remus would not have been more than stunned if his head had not struck on the copper plowshare. He lay quite still. He was dead. Whether the gods themselves had willed that he should die, or whether it was chance, the blow killed him.
