A story hung by him, a story which his comrades acutely connected
with his habitual air of somewhat peevish pride. Two points were
held to be clear amid its general vagueness--a rich stranger paid his
schooling, and he was himself very poor, though there was an
attractive piquancy in the poverty of Flavian which in a scholar of
another figure might have been despised. Over Marius too his
dominion was entire. Three years older than he, Flavian was
appointed to help the younger boy in his studies, and Marius thus
became virtually his servant in many things, taking his humours with
a sort of grateful pride in being noticed at all, and, thinking over
all this afterwards, found that the [51] fascination experienced by
him had been a sentimental one, dependent on the concession to
himself of an intimacy, a certain tolerance of his company, granted
to none beside.

That was in the earliest days; and then, as their intimacy grew, the
genius, the intellectual power of Flavian began its sway over him.
The brilliant youth who loved dress, and dainty food, and flowers,
and seemed to have a natural alliance with, and claim upon,
everything else which was physically select and bright, cultivated
also that foppery of words, of choice diction which was common among
the elite spirits of that day; and Marius, early an expert and
elegant penman, transcribed his verses (the euphuism of which, amid a
genuine original power, was then so delightful to him) in beautiful
ink, receiving in return the profit of Flavian's really great
intellectual capacities, developed and accomplished under the
ambitious desire to make his way effectively in life. Among other
things he introduced him to the writings of a sprightly wit, then
very busy with the pen, one Lucian--writings seeming to overflow with
that intellectual light turned upon dim places, which, at least in