[13] To an instinctive seriousness, the material abode in which the childhood of Marius was passed had largely added.

Nothing, you felt, as you first caught sight of that coy, retired place,--surely nothing could happen there, without its full accompaniment of thought or reverie.

White-nights! so you might interpret its old Latin name.* "The red rose came first," says a quaint German mystic, speaking of "the mystery of so-called white things," as being "ever an after-thought--the doubles, or seconds, of real things, and themselves but half-real, half-material--the white queen, the white witch, the white mass, which, as the black mass is a travesty of the true mass turned to evil by horrible old witches, is celebrated by young candidates for the priesthood with an unconsecrated host, by way of rehearsal." So, white-nights, I suppose, after something like the same analogy, should be [14] nights not of quite blank forgetfulness, but passed in continuous dreaming, only half veiled by sleep.

Certainly the place was, in such case, true to its fanciful name in this, that you might very well conceive, in face of it, that dreaming even in the daytime might come to much there.
The young Marius represented an ancient family whose estate had come down to him much curtailed through the extravagance of a certain Marcellus two generations before, a favourite in his day of the fashionable world at Rome, where he had at least spent his substance with a correctness of taste Marius might seem to have inherited from him; as he was believed also to resemble him in a singularly pleasant smile, consistent however, in the younger face, with some degree of sombre expression when the mind within was but slightly moved.
As the means of life decreased, the farm had crept nearer and nearer to the dwelling-house, about which there was therefore a trace of workday negligence or homeliness, not without its picturesque charm for some, for the young master himself among them.

The more observant passer-by would note, curious as to the inmates, a certain amount of dainty care amid that neglect, as if it came in part, perhaps, from a reluctance to disturb old associations.