It was to the moral effect of his words that he must trust: "Non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." Catiline heard him to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the Senate, and went out of the city.

Sallust tells us that he threatened to extinguish, in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the flames prepared for his own destruction.

Sallust, however, was not present on the occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period of Catiline's career.

Cicero tells us expressly, in one of his subsequent works, that Catiline was struck dumb.[200] Of this first Catiline oration Sallust says, that "Marcus Tullius the Consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or stirred to anger, made a brilliant speech, very useful to the Republic."[201] This, coming from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told by Cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of a friend.
Catiline met some of his colleagues the same night.

They were the very men who as Senators had been present at his confusion, and to them he declared his purpose of going.