chanced to remember, dear my lord, what day it is?'
returned Decius, when he had bestowed a kiss on his kinsman's cheek.
'Had I but vigour enough, this morning would have seen me on a
pilgrimage to the tomb.' He put out a hand towards Neapolis. 'I rose at
daybreak to meditate the Fourth Eclogue.'

'The ides of October--true. I take shame to myself for having lost the
memory of Virgil in my own distresses.'

Decius, whose years were scarce thirty, had the aspect and the gait of
an elderly man; his thin hair streaked with grey, his cheeks hollow,
his eyes heavy, he stooped in walking and breathed with difficulty; the
tunic and the light cloak, which were all his attire, manifested an
infinite carelessness in matters of costume, being worn and soiled.
Than he, no Roman was poorer; he owned nothing but his clothing and a
few books. Akin to the greatest, and bearing a name of which he was
inordinately proud--as a schoolboy he had once burst into tears when
reciting with passion the Lay of the Decii--felt content to owe his
sustenance to the delicate and respectful kindness of Maximus, who
sympathised with the great wrong he had suffered early in life. This
was no less than wilful impoverishment by his father, who, seeking to
atone for sins by fanaticism, had sold the little he possessed to found
a pilgrims' hospice at Portus, whither, accompanied by the
twelve-year-old boy, he went to live as monk-servitor In a year or two
the penitent died; Decius, in revolt against the tasks to which he was
subjected, managed to escape, made his way to Rome, and appealed to
Maximus. Nominally he still held the post of secretary to his
benefactor, but for many years he had enjoyed entire leisure, all of it
devoted to study. Several times illness had brought him to the
threshold of death, yet it had never conquered his love of letters, his
enthusiasm for his country's past. Few liked him only one or two
understood him: Decius was content that it should be so.

'Let us speak of it,' he continued, unrolling a manuscript of Virgil
some two hundred years old, a gift to him from Maximus. 'Tell me, dear
lord, your true thought: is it indeed a prophecy of the Divine Birth?
To you'--he smiled his gentle, beautiful smile--'may I not confess that
I have doubted this interpretation? Yet'--he cast his eyes down--'the
doubt is perhaps a prompting of the spirit of evil.'

'I know not, Decius, I know not,' replied the sick man with thoughtful
melanchol