Nay! there was blood--divine blood--in the hearts of some of them: the images in the Grove of Feronia had sweated blood! From one and all Cornelius had turned away: like the "atheist" of whom Apuleius tells he had never once raised hand to lip in passing image or sanctuary, and had parted from Marius finally when the latter determined to enter the crowded doorway of a temple, on their return into the Forum, below the Palatine hill, where the mothers were pressing in, with a multitude of every sort of children, to touch the lightning-struck image of the wolf-nurse of Romulus--so tender to little ones!--just discernible in its dark shrine, amid a blaze of lights.

Marius gazed after his companion of the day, as he mounted the steps to his lodging, singing to himself, as it seemed.

Marius failed precisely to catch the words.
And, as the rich, fresh evening came on, there was heard all over Rome, far above a whisper, [187] the whole town seeming hushed to catch it distinctly, the lively, reckless call to "play," from the sons and daughters of foolishness, to those in whom their life was still green--Donec virenti canities abest!--Donec virenti canities abest!+ Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call.

And as for himself, slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which he had entered Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant affections, such as these, that his Epicureanism had committed him.
NOTES 187.

+Horace, Odes I.ix.17.