CHAPTER X: ON THE WAY.
Mirum est ut animus agitatione motuque corporis excitetur.
Pliny's Letters.
[158] MANY points in that train of thought, its harder and more energetic practical details especially, at first surmised but vaguely in the intervals of his visits to the tomb of Flavian, attained the coherence of formal principle amid the stirring incidents of the journey, which took him, still in all the buoyancy of his nineteen years and greatly expectant, to Rome.

That summons had come from one of the former friends of his father in the capital, who had kept himself acquainted with the lad's progress, and, assured of his parts, his courtly ways, above all of his beautiful penmanship, now offered him a place, virtually that of an amanuensis, near the person of the philosophic emperor.

The old town-house of his family on the Caelian hill, so long neglected, might well require his personal care; and Marius, relieved a little by his preparations for travelling from a certain over-tension [159] of spirit in which he had lived of late, was presently on his way, to await introduction to Aurelius, on his expected return home, after a first success, illusive enough as it was soon to appear, against the invaders from beyond the Danube.
The opening stage of his journey, through the firm, golden weather, for which he had lingered three days beyond the appointed time of starting--days brown with the first rains of autumn--brought him, by the byways among the lower slopes of the Apennines of Luna, to the town of Luca, a station on the Cassian Way; travelling so far mainly on foot, while the baggage followed under the care of his attendants.

He wore a broad felt hat, in fashion not unlike a more modern pilgrim's, the neat head projecting from the collar of his gray paenula, or travelling mantle, sewed closely together over the breast, but with its two sides folded up upon the shoulders, to leave the arms free in walking, and was altogether so trim and fresh, that, as he climbed the hill from Pisa, by the long steep lane through the olive-yards, and turned to gaze where he could just discern the cypresses of the old school garden, like two black lines down the yellow walls, a little child took possession of his hand, and, looking up at him with entire confidence, paced on bravely at his side, for the mere pleasure of his company, to the spot where the road declined again [160] into the valley beyond.

From this point, leaving the servants behind, he surrendered himself, a willing subject, as he walked, to the impressions of the road, and was almost surprised, both at the suddenness with which evening came on, and the distance from his old home at which it found him.
And at the little town of Luca, he felt that indescribable sense of a welcoming in the mere outward appearance of things, which seems to mark out certain places for the special purpose of evening rest, and gives them always a peculiar amiability in retrospect.