A wicket opened, and at once there sounded from within an
exclamation of joyful surprise. After much clanking, the door
yielded, and an elderly servant, the freedman Eugenius, offered
greeting to his lord. Basil's first question was whether Decius had
been there; he learnt that his kinsman was now in the house, having
come yesterday to reside here from the Anician palace beyond the
Tiber.
'Tell him at once that I am here. Stay; I dare say he is in the
library. I will go to him.'
He passed through the atrium, adorned with ancestral busts and with
the consular fasces which for centuries had signified nothing,
through a room hung with tapestry and floored with fine mosaic,
through the central court, where the fountain was dry, and by a
colonnade reached the secluded room which was called library, though
few books remained out of the large collection once guarded here. In
a sunny embrasure, a codex open on his knees, sat the pale student;
seeing Basil, he started up in great surprise, and, when they had
embraced, regarded him anxiously.
'How is this? What has happened? Some calamity, I see.
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