Here, then, under the tame surface of what was meant for a life of business, Marius discovered, welcoming a brother, the spontaneous self-revelation of a soul as delicate as his own,--a soul for which conversation with itself was a necessity of existence.

Marius, indeed, had always suspected that the sense of such necessity was a peculiarity of his.

But here, certainly, was another, in this respect like himself; and again he seemed to detect the advent of some [47] new or changed spirit into the world, mystic, inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly external and objective habit of life, which had been sufficient for the old classic soul.

His purely literary curiosity was greatly stimulated by this example of a book of self-portraiture.

It was in fact the position of the modern essayist,--creature of efforts rather than of achievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but at least conscious of lights by the way, which he must needs record, acknowledge.