elt for a moment as if
he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that could
scarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as the
earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of
which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of human
type there present, was the various expression of every form of human
sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought so
pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women of
humble condition? Those young men, bent down so discreetly on the
details of their sacred service, had faced life and were glad, by some
science, or light of knowledge they had, to which there had certainly
been no parallel in the older world. Was some credible message from
beyond 'the flaming rampart of the world'--a message of hope regarding
the place of men's souls and their interest in the sum of
things--already moulding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices,
now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work
in them, which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever known look
comparatively vulgar and mean."

The spectacle of the Sacrament adds its deep impression, "bread and wine
especially--pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculan
vineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and
animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now
in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch and see, in the
midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things."

The sense of youth in it all was perhaps the dominating impression--the
youth that was yet old as the world in experience and discovery of the
true meaning of life. The young Christ was rejuvenating the world, and
all things were being made new by him.

This is the climax of the book. He meets Lucian the aged, who for a
moment darkens his dawning faith, but that which has come to him has
been no casual emotion, no forced or spectacular conviction. He does not
leap to the recognition of Christianity at first sight, but very quietly
realises and accepts it as that secret after which his pagan idealism
had been all the time groping. The story closes amid scenes of plague
and earthquake and martyrdom in which he and Cornelius are taken
prisoners, and he dies at last a Christian. "It was the same people who,
in the grey, austere evening of that day, took up his remain