seasons of mental fair weather, can make people laugh where they have
been wont, perhaps, to pray. And, surely, the sunlight which filled
those well-remembered early mornings in school, had had more than the
usual measure of gold in it! [52] Marius, at least, would lie awake
before the time, thinking with delight of the long coming hours of
hard work in the presence of Flavian, as other boys dream of a
holiday.

It was almost by accident at last, so wayward and capricious was he,
that reserve gave way, and Flavian told the story of his father--a
freedman, presented late in life, and almost against his will, with
the liberty so fondly desired in youth, but on condition of the
sacrifice of part of his peculium--the slave's diminutive hoard--
amassed by many a self-denial, in an existence necessarily hard. The
rich man, interested in the promise of the fair child born on his
estate, had sent him to school. The meanness and dejection,
nevertheless, of that unoccupied old age defined the leading memory
of Flavian, revived sometimes, after this first confidence, with a
burst of angry tears amid the sunshine. But nature had had her
economy in nursing the strength of that one natural affection; for,
save his half-selfish care for Marius, it was the single, really
generous part, the one piety, in the lad's character. In him Marius
saw the spirit of unbelief, achieved as if at one step. The much-
admired freedman's son, as with the privilege of a natural
aristocracy, believed only in himself, in the brilliant, and mainly
sensuous gifts, he had, or meant to acquire.

And then, he had certainly yielded himself, [53] though still with
untouched health, in a world where manhood comes early, to the
seductions of that luxurious town, and Marius wondered sometimes, in