Few liked him only one or two understood him: Decius was content that it should be so.
'Let us speak of it,' he continued, unrolling a manuscript of Virgil some two hundred years old, a gift to him from Maximus.

'Tell me, dear lord, your true thought: is it indeed a prophecy of the Divine Birth?
To you'-- he smiled his gentle, beautiful smile--'may I not confess that I have doubted this interpretation?
Yet'-- he cast his eyes down--'the doubt is perhaps a prompting of the spirit of evil.' 'I know not, Decius, I know not,' replied the sick man with thoughtful melancholy.

'My father held it a prophecy his father before him .-- But forgive me, I am expecting anxiously the return of Basil; yonder sail--is it his?
Your eyes see further than mine.' Decius at once put aside his own reflections, and watched the oncoming bark.

Before long there was an end of doubt.

Rising in agitation to his feet, Maximus gave orders that the litter, which since yesterday morning had been in readiness, should at once be borne with all speed down to the landing-place.