surmises, though scarcely distinct enough to be thoughts, were moving
backwards and forwards in his mind, as the stirring wind had done all
day among the trees, and were like the passing of some mysterious
influence over all the elements of his nature and experience. One
thing only distracted him--a certain pity at the bottom of his heart,
and almost on his lips, for the sacrificial victims and their looks
of terror, rising almost to disgust at the central act of the
sacrifice itself, a piece of everyday butcher's work, such as we
decorously hide out of sight; though some then present certainly
displayed a frank curiosity in the spectacle thus permitted them on a
religious pretext. The old sculptors of the great procession on the
frieze of the Parthenon at Athens, have delineated the placid heads
of the victims led in it to sacrifice, with a perfect feeling for
animals in forcible contrast with any indifference as to their
sufferings. It was this contrast that distracted Marius now in the
blessing of his fields, and qualified his devout absorption upon the
scrupulous fulfilment of all the details of the ceremonial, as the
procession approached the altars.

[10] The names of that great populace of "little gods," dear to the
Roman home, which the pontiffs had placed on the sacred list of the
Indigitamenta, to be invoked, because they can help, on special
occasions, were not forgotten in the long litany--Vatican who causes
the infant to utter his first cry, Fabulinus who prompts his first
word, Cuba who keeps him quiet in his cot, Domiduca especially, for
whom Marius had through life a particular memory and devotion, the
goddess who watches over one's safe coming home. The urns of the
dead in the family chapel received their due service. They also were
now become something divine, a goodly company of friendly and
protecting spirits, encamped about the place of their former abode--