It was the [55] attitude, the melancholy intellectual attitude, of one who might be greatly mistaken in things--who might make the greatest of mistakes.
A heart that could forget itself in the misfortune, or even in the weakness of others:--of this Marius had certainly found the trace, as a confidant of the emperor's conversations with himself, in spite of those jarring inhumanities, of that pretension to a stoical indifference, and the many difficulties of his manner of writing.

He found it again not long afterwards, in still stronger evidence, in this way.

As he read one morning early, there slipped from the rolls of manuscript a sealed letter with the emperor's superscription, which might well be of importance, and he felt bound to deliver it at once in person; Aurelius being then absent from Rome in one of his favourite retreats, at Praeneste, taking a few days of quiet with his young children, before his departure for the war.

A whole day passed as Marius crossed the Campagna on horseback, pleased by the random autumn lights bringing out in the distance the sheep at pasture, the shepherds in their picturesque dress, the golden elms, tower and villa; and it was after dark that he mounted the steep street of the little hill-town to the imperial residence.

He was struck by an odd mixture of stillness and excitement about the place.