day, it seemed, on that fine
afternoon, and the villages he passed through so silent; the
inhabitants being, for the most part, at their labour in the country.
Then, at length, above the tiled outbuildings, were the walls of the
old villa itself, with the tower for the pigeons; and, not among
cypresses, but half-hidden by aged poplar-trees, their leaves like
golden fruit, the birds floating around it, the conical roof of the
tomb itself. In the presence of an old servant who remembered him, the
great seals were broken, the rusty key turned at last in the lock, the
door was forced out among the weeds grown thickly about it, and Marius
was actually in the place which had been so often in his thoughts.

He was struck, not however without a touch of remorse thereupon,
chiefly by an odd air of neglect, the neglect of a place allowed to
remain as when it was last used, and left in a hurry, till long years
had covered all alike with thick dust [206] --the faded flowers, the
burnt-out lamps, the tools and hardened mortar of the workmen who had
had something to do there. A heavy fragment of woodwork had fallen and
chipped open one of the oldest of the mortuary urns, many hundreds in
number ranged around the walls. It was not properly an urn, but a
minute coffin of stone, and the fracture had revealed a piteous
spectacle of the mouldering, unburned remains within; the bones of a
child, as he understood, which might have died, in ripe age, three
times over, since it slipped away from among his great-grandfathers, so
far up in the line. Yet the protruding baby hand seemed to stir up in
him feelings vivid enough, bringing him intimately within the scope of
dead people's grievances. He noticed, side by side with the urn of his
mother, that of a boy of about his own age--one of the serving-boys of
the household--who had descended hither, from the lightsome world of
childhood, almost at the same time with her. It seemed as if this boy
of his own age had taken filial place beside her there, in his stead.
That hard feeling, again, which had always lingered in his mind with
the thought of the father he had scarcely known, melted wholly away, as
he read the precise number of his years, and reflected suddenly--He was
of my own present age; no hard old man, but with interests, as he
looked round him on the world for the last time, even as mine to-day!

[207] And with that came a blinding rush of kindness, as if two
alienated friends h