The natural fatigue of the long journey overcame them quite suddenly at last, when they were still about two miles distant from Rome.

The seemingly endless line of tombs and cypresses had been visible for hours against the sky towards the west; and it was just where a cross-road from the Latin Way fell into the Appian, that Cornelius halted at a doorway in a long, low wall--the outer wall of some villa courtyard, it might be supposed-- [95] as if at liberty to enter, and rest there awhile.

He held the door open for his companion to enter also, if he would; with an expression, as he lifted the latch, which seemed to ask Marius, apparently shrinking from a possible intrusion: "Would you like to see it ?" Was he willing to look upon that, the seeing of which might define--yes! define the critical turning-point in his days?
The little doorway in this long, low wall admitted them, in fact, into the court or garden of a villa, disposed in one of those abrupt natural hollows, which give its character to the country in this place; the house itself, with all its dependent buildings, the spaciousness of which surprised Marius as he entered, being thus wholly concealed from passengers along the road.

All around, in those well-ordered precincts, were the quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble taste--a taste, indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older art, here arranged and harmonised, with effects, both as regards colour and form, so delicate as to seem really derivative from some finer intelligence in these matters than lay within the resources of the ancient world.

It was the old way of true Renaissance--being indeed the way of nature with her roses, the divine way with the body of man, perhaps with his soul--conceiving the new organism by no sudden and [96] abrupt creation, but rather by the action of a new principle upon elements, all of which had in truth already lived and died many times.