After the oration the Senate met again, and declared Catiline and Mallius to be public enemies.
Twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken--twenty-four days during which Rome must have been in a state of very great fever.
Cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he made that speech for Murena before the judicial bench of which I gave an account in the last chapter, and also probably another for Piso, of which we have nothing left.

We cannot but marvel that he should have been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and carefully to study all the details of legal cases.

It was only on October 21st that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery.
There is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes.
On the same day, the 20th of November, when Cicero was defending Murena, the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain Roman lady named Sempronia.

It was she of whom Sallust said that she danced better than became an honest woman.

If we can believe Sallust, she was steeped in luxury and vice.