The window-less Roman abode must have had much of what to a modern would be gloom.

How did the children, one wonders, endure houses with so little escape for the eye into the world outside?
Aurelius, who had altered little else, choosing to live there, in a genuine homeliness, had shifted and made the most of the level lights, and broken out a quite medieval window here and there, and the clear daylight, fully appreciated by his youthful visitor, made pleasant shadows among the objects of the imperial collection.

Some of these, indeed, by reason of their Greek simplicity and grace, themselves shone out like spaces of a purer, early light, amid the splendours of the Roman manufacture.
Though he looked, thought Marius, like a man who did not sleep enough, he was abounding and bright to-day, after one of those pitiless headaches, which since boyhood had been the "thorn in his side," challenging the pretensions of his philosophy to fortify one in humble endurances.

At the first moment, to Marius, remembering the spectacle of the emperor in ceremony, it was almost bewildering to be in [217] private conversation with him.

There was much in the philosophy of Aurelius--much consideration of mankind at large, of great bodies, aggregates and generalities, after the Stoic manner--which, on a nature less rich than his, might have acted as an inducement to care for people in inverse proportion to their nearness to him.