is was
associated, by some perhaps fantastic affinity, with a peculiar trait
of severity, beyond his guesses as to the secret of it, which mingled
with the blitheness of his new companion. Concurring, indeed, with the
condition of a Roman soldier, it was certainly something far more than
the expression of military hardness, or ascesis; and what was earnest,
or even austere, in the landscape they had traversed together, seemed
to have been waiting for the passage of this figure to interpret or
inform it. Again, as in his early days with Flavian, a vivid personal
presence broke through the dreamy idealism, which had almost come to
doubt of other men's reality: reassuringly, indeed, yet not without
some sense of a constraining tyranny over him from without.

For Cornelius, returning from the campaign, to take up his quarters on
the Palatine, in the imperial guard, seemed to carry about with him, in
that privileged world of comely usage to which he belonged, the
atmosphere of some still more jealously exclusive circle. They halted
on the morrow at noon, not at an inn, but at the house of one of the
young soldier's friends, whom they found absent, indeed, in consequence
of the [170] plague in those parts, so that after a mid-day rest only,
they proceeded again on their journey. The great room of the villa, to
which they were admitted, had lain long untouched; and the dust rose,
as they entered, into the slanting bars of sunlight, that fell through
the half-closed shutters. It was here, to while away the time, that
Cornelius bethought himself of displaying to his new friend the various
articles and ornaments of his knightly array--the breastplate, the
sandals and cuirass, lacing them on, one by one, with the assistance of
Marius, and finally the great golden bracelet on the right arm,
conferred on him by his general for an act of valour. And as he
gleamed there, amid that odd interchange of light and shade, with the
staff of a silken standard firm in his hand, Marius felt as if he were
face to face, for the first time, with some new knighthood or chivalry,
just then coming into the world.

It was soon after they left this place, journeying now by carriage,
that Rome was seen at last, with much excitement on the part of our
travellers; Cornelius, and some others of whom the party then
consisted, agreeing, chiefly for the sake of Marius, to hasten forward,
that it might be reached by daylight, with a cheerful noise of ra