steps to be introduced to the emperor Aurelius. Attired in the newest
mode, his legs wound in dainty fasciae of white leather, with the heavy
gold ring of the ingenuus, and in his toga of ceremony, he still
retained all his country freshness of complexion. The eyes of the
"golden youth" of Rome were upon him as the chosen friend of Cornelius,
and the destined servant of the emperor; but not jealously. In spite
of, perhaps partly because of, his habitual reserve of manner, he had
become "the fashion," even among those who felt instinctively the irony
which lay beneath that remarkable self-possession, as of one taking all
things with a [213] difference from other people, perceptible in voice,
in expression, and even in his dress. It was, in truth, the air of one
who, entering vividly into life, and relishing to the full the
delicacies of its intercourse, yet feels all the while, from the point
of view of an ideal philosophy, that he is but conceding reality to
suppositions, choosing of his own will to walk in a day-dream, of the
illusiveness of which he at least is aware.

In the house of the chief chamberlain Marius waited for the due moment
of admission to the emperor's presence. He was admiring the peculiar
decoration of the walls, coloured like rich old red leather. In the
midst of one of them was depicted, under a trellis of fruit you might
have gathered, the figure of a woman knocking at a door with wonderful
reality of perspective. Then the summons came; and in a few minutes,
the etiquette of the imperial household being still a simple matter, he
had passed the curtains which divided the central hall of the palace
into three parts--three degrees of approach to the sacred person--and
was speaking to Aurelius himself; not in Greek, in which the emperor
oftenest conversed with the learned, but, more familiarly, in Latin,
adorned however, or disfigured, by many a Greek phrase, as now and
again French phrases have made the adornment of fashionable English. It
was with real kindliness that Marcus Aurelius looked upon Marius, as
[214] a youth of great attainments in Greek letters and philosophy; and
he liked also his serious expression, being, as we know, a believer in
the doctrine of physiognomy--that, as he puts it, not love only, but
every other affection of man's soul, looks out very plainly from the
window of the eyes.

The apartment in which Marius found himself was of ancient aspect, and
richly decorated wit