read the Charmides--that other dialogue of Plato, into which he seems
to have expressed the very genius of old Greek temperance--the image
of this speaker came back vividly before him, to take the chief part
in the conversation.

It was as a weighty sanction of such temperance, in almost visible
symbolism (an outward imagery identifying itself with unseen
moralities) that the memory of that night's double experience, the
dream of the great sallow snake and the utterance of the young
priest, always returned to him, and the contrast therein involved
made him revolt with unfaltering instinct from the bare thought of an
excess in sleep, or diet, or even in matters of taste, still more
from any excess of a coarser kind.

When he awoke again, still in the exceeding freshness he had felt on
his arrival, and now in full sunlight, it was as if his sickness had
really departed with the terror of the night: a confusion had passed
from the brain, a painful dryness from his hands. Simply to be alive
and there was a delight; and as he bathed in the fresh water set
ready for his use, the air of the room about him seemed like pure
gold, the very shadows rich with colour. Summoned at length by one
of the white-robed brethren, he went out to walk in the temple
garden. At a distance, on either side, his guide pointed out to him
the Houses of Birth and Death, erected for the reception [35]
respectively of women about to become mothers, and of persons about
to die; neither of those incidents being allowed to defile, as was
thought, the actual precincts of the shrine. His visitor of the
previous night he saw nowhere again. But among the official
ministers of the place there was one, already marked as of great
celebrity, whom Marius saw often in later days at Rome, the physician