The artifice he had elaborated was, to be sure, full of hazard; accident might disconcert everything; the instruments upon whom he reckoned might fail him.

But not because of this possibility was his heart so miserably perturbed.

It was himself that he dreaded--the failure of his own purpose, the treachery of his own will.
On he rode in the full eye of the August sun.

The vast, undulant plain spread around him; its farms, villas, aqueducts no less eloquent of death than the tombs by the wayside its still air and the cloudless azure above speaking to a man's soul as with the voice of eternity.
Marcian was very sensible of such solemn influence.

More than once, in traversing this region, he had been moved to bow his head in devotion purer than that which commonly inspired his prayers, but to-day he knew not a moment's calm.