incense
brought by the women, who from the first had had their fondness for the
wanton graces of the deceased. The dead body was surmounted by a waxen
effigy of great size, arrayed in the triumphal ornaments. [32] At last
the Centurions to whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in hand,
to ignite the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in wild
excitement, flung themselves around it, casting into the flames the
decorations they had received for acts of valour under the dead
emperor's command.

It had been a really heroic order, spoiled a little, at the last
moment, through the somewhat tawdry artifice, by which an eagle--not a
very noble or youthful specimen of its kind--was caused to take flight
amid the real or affected awe of the spectators, above the perishing
remains; a court chamberlain, according to ancient etiquette,
subsequently making official declaration before the Senate, that the
imperial "genius" had been seen in this way, escaping from the fire.
And Marius was present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by
"acclamation," muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of low,
rhythmical chant, decreed Caelum--the privilege of divine rank to the
departed.

The actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the widowed
Lucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine;
and the conveyance of them to the little cell, already populous, in the
central mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in all the splendour of
its statued colonnades, were a matter of private or domestic duty;
after the due accomplishment of which Aurelius was at [33] liberty to
retire for a time into the privacy o his beloved apartments of the
Palatine. And hither, not long afterwards, Marius was summoned a
second time, to receive from the imperial hands the great pile of
Manuscripts it would be his business to revise and arrange.

One year had passed since his first visit to the palace; and as he
climbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against the
sunless sky, like living creatures in pain. He had to traverse a long
subterranean gallery, once a secret entrance to the imperial
apartments, and in our own day, amid the ruin of all around it, as
smooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from its floor
after the return of the emperor from the shows. It was here, on such
an occasion, that the emperor Caligula, at the age of twenty-nine, had
come by his end