forth, regarding what he had already recognised,
intellectually, as for him at least the most beautiful thing in the
world.

To understand the influence upon him of what follows the reader must
remember that it was an experience which came amid a deep sense of
vacuity in life. The fairest products of [129] the earth seemed to be
dropping to pieces, as if in men's very hands, around him. How real
was their sorrow, and his! "His observation of life" had come to be
like the constant telling of a sorrowful rosary, day after day; till,
as if taking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind, the eye
also, the very senses, were grown faint and sick. And now it happened
as with the actual morning on which he found himself a spectator of
this new thing. The long winter had been a season of unvarying
sullenness. At last, on this day he awoke with a sharp flash of
lightning in the earliest twilight: in a little while the heavy rain
had filtered the air: the clear light was abroad; and, as though the
spring had set in with a sudden leap in the heart of things, the whole
scene around him lay like some untarnished picture beneath a sky of
delicate blue. Under the spell of his late depression, Marius had
suddenly determined to leave Rome for a while. But desiring first to
advertise Cornelius of his movements, and failing to find him in his
lodgings, he had ventured, still early in the day, to seek him in the
Cecilian villa. Passing through its silent and empty court-yard he
loitered for a moment, to admire. Under the clear but immature light of
winter morning after a storm, all the details of form and colour in the
old marbles were distinctly visible, and with a kind of severity or
sadness--so it struck him--amid their beauty: [130] in them, and in all
other details of the scene--the cypresses, the bunches of pale
daffodils in the grass, the curves of the purple hills of Tusculum,
with the drifts of virgin snow still lying in their hollows.

The little open door, through which he passed from the court-yard,
admitted him into what was plainly the vast Lararium, or domestic
sanctuary, of the Cecilian family, transformed in many particulars, but
still richly decorated, and retaining much of its ancient furniture in
metal-work and costly stone. The peculiar half-light of dawn seemed to
be lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls; and here,
though at that moment in absolute silence, a great company of people
was