[172] MARIUS awoke early and passed curiously from room to room, noting for more careful inspection by and by the rolls of manuscripts.

Even greater than his curiosity in gazing for the first time on this ancient possession, was his eagerness to look out upon Rome itself, as he pushed back curtain and shutter, and stepped forth in the fresh morning upon one of the many balconies, with an oft-repeated dream realised at last.

He was certainly fortunate in the time of his coming to Rome.
That old pagan world, of which Rome was the flower, had reached its perfection in the things of poetry and art--a perfection which indicated only too surely the eve of decline.

As in some vast intellectual museum, all its manifold products were intact and in their places, and with custodians also still extant, duly qualified to appreciate and explain them.

And at no period of history had the material Rome itself been better worth seeing--lying there not less consummate than that world of [173] pagan intellect which it represented in every phase of its darkness and light.