that was past, he started into instant animation. His
countenance brightened, his form expanded, he dropped the hand of
Antonina, raised his arm aloft towards the wrathful heaven in frantic
triumph, then staggering forwards, fell on his knees at the base of the
temple steps.

Whatever the remembrances of his passage through the wall at the
Pincian Hill, and of the toil and peril succeeding it, which had
revived when the thunder first sounded in his ear, they now vanished as
rapidly as they had arisen, and left his wandering memory free to
revert to the scenes which the image of Serapis was most fitted to
recall. Recollections of his boyish enjoyments in the temple at
Alexandria, of his youth's enthusiasm, of the triumphs of his early
manhood--all disjointed and wayward, yet all bright, glorious,
intoxicating--flashed before his shattered mind. Tears, the first that
he had shed since his happy youth, flowed quickly down his withered
cheeks. He pressed his hot forehead, he beat his parched hand in
ecstasy on the cold, wet steps beneath him. He muttered breathless
ejaculations, he breathed strange murmurs of endearment, he humbled
himself in his rapturous delight beneath the walls of the temple like a
dog that has discovered his lost master and fawns affectionately at his
feet. Criminal as he was, his joy in his abasement, his glory in his
miserable isolation from humanity, was a doom of degradation pitiable
to behold.

After an interval his mood changed. He rose to his feet, his trembling
limbs strengthened with a youthful vigour as he ascended the temple
steps and gained its doorway. He turned for a moment, and looked forth
over the street, ere he entered the hallowed domain of his distempered
imagination. To him the cloudy sky above was now shining with the
radiance of the sun-bright East. The death-laden highways of Rome, as
they stretched before him, were beautiful with lofty trees, and
populous with happy figures; and along the dark flagstones beneath,
where still lay the corpses which he had no eye to see, he beheld
already the priests of Serapis with his revered guardian, his beloved
Macrinus of former days, at their head, advancing to meet and welcome
him in the hall of the Egyptian god. Visions such as these passed
gloriously before the Pagan's eyes as he stood triumphant on the steps
of the temple, and brightened to him with a noonday light its dusky
recesses when, after his brief delay, he turned f