"Partake ever of Her best!" And what Marius, peeping now very
closely upon the intimacies of that singular mind, found a thing
actually pathetic and affecting, was the manner of the writer's
bearing as in the presence of this supposed guest; so elusive, so
jealous of any palpable manifestation of himself, so taxing to one's
faith, never allowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at
rest. Only, he [50] would do his part, at least, in maintaining the
constant fitness, the sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber.
Seeming to vary with the intellectual fortune of the hour, from the
plainest account of experience, to a sheer fantasy, only "believed
because it was impossible," that one hope was, at all events,
sufficient to make men's common pleasures and their common ambition,
above all their commonest vices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to
know of. It bred in him a kind of magnificence of character, in the
old Greek sense of the term; a temper incompatible with any merely
plausible advocacy of his convictions, or merely superficial thoughts
about anything whatever, or talk about other people, or speculation
as to what was passing in their so visibly little souls, or much
talking of any kind, however clever or graceful. A soul thus
disposed had "already entered into the better life":--was indeed in
some sort "a priest, a minister of the gods." Hence his constant
"recollection"; a close watching of his soul, of a kind almost unique
in the ancient world.--Before all things examine into thyself: strive
to be at home with thyself!--Marius, a sympathetic witness of all
this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of monasticism itself
in the prophetic future. With this mystic companion he had gone a
step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence. Here was
already a master in that craft of self-direction, which was about to
[51] play so large a part in the forming of human mind, under the
sanction of the Christian church.