Galen, now about thirty years old. He was standing, the hood partly
drawn over his face, beside the holy well, as Marius and his guide
approached it.

This famous well or conduit, primary cause of the temple and its
surrounding institutions, was supplied by the water of a spring
flowing directly out of the rocky foundations of the shrine. From
the rim of its basin rose a circle of trim columns to support a
cupola of singular lightness and grace, itself full of reflected
light from the rippling surface, through which might be traced the
wavy figure-work of the marble lining below as the stream of water
rushed in. Legend told of a visit of Aesculapius to this place,
earlier and happier than his first coming to Rome: an inscription
around the cupola recorded it in letters of gold. "Being come unto
this place the son of God loved it exceedingly:"--Huc profectus
filius Dei maxime amavit hunc locum;--and it was then that that most
intimately human of the gods had given men the well, with all its
salutary properties. The [36] element itself when received into the
mouth, in consequence of its entire freedom from adhering organic
matter, was more like a draught of wonderfully pure air than water;
and after tasting, Marius was told many mysterious circumstances
concerning it, by one and another of the bystanders:--he who drank
often thereof might well think he had tasted of the Homeric lotus, so
great became his desire to remain always on that spot: carried to
other places, it was almost indefinitely conservative of its fine
qualities: nay! a few drops of it would amend other water; and it
flowed not only with unvarying abundance but with a volume so oddly
rhythmical that the well stood always full to the brim, whatever
quantity might be drawn from it, seeming to answer with strange
alacrity of service to human needs, like a true creature and pupil of