Old wine was poured out freely for the servants at supper in the great kitchen, where they had worked in the imperfect light through the long evenings of winter.

The young Marius himself took but a very sober part in the noisy feasting.

A devout, regretful after-taste of what had been really beautiful in the ritual he had accomplished took him early away, that he might the better recall in reverie all the circumstances of the celebration of the day.

As he sank into a sleep, pleasant with all the influences of long hours in the open air, he seemed still to be moving in procession through the fields, with a kind of pleasurable awe.

That feeling was still upon him as he [12] awoke amid the beating of violent rain on the shutters, in the first storm of the season.