perishing remains; a court chamberlain, according to ancient
etiquette, subsequently making official declaration before the
Senate, that the imperial "genius" had been seen in this way,
escaping from the fire. And Marius was present when the Fathers,
duly certified of the fact, by "acclamation," muttering their
judgment all together, in a kind of low, rhythmical chant, decreed
Caelum--the privilege of divine rank to the departed.

The actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the
widowed Lucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops
of wine; and the conveyance of them to the little cell, already
populous, in the central mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in
all the splendour of its statued colonnades, were a matter of private
or domestic duty; after the due accomplishment of which Aurelius was
at [33] liberty to retire for a time into the privacy o his beloved
apartments of the Palatine. And hither, not long afterwards, Marius
was summoned a second time, to receive from the imperial hands the
great pile of Manuscripts it would be his business to revise and
arrange.

One year had passed since his first visit to the palace; and as he
climbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against the
sunless sky, like living creatures in pain. He had to traverse a
long subterranean gallery, once a secret entrance to the imperial
apartments, and in our own day, amid the ruin of all around it, as
smooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from its
floor after the return of the emperor from the shows. It was here,
on such an occasion, that the emperor Caligula, at the age of twenty-
nine, had come by his end, the assassins gliding along it as he
lingered a few moments longer to watch the movements of a party of