The artifice he had elaborated was, to be sure, full of hazard;
accident might disconcert everything; the instruments upon whom he
reckoned might fail him. But not because of this possibility was his
heart so miserably perturbed. It was himself that he dreaded--the
failure of his own purpose, the treachery of his own will.
On he rode in the full eye of the August sun. The vast, undulant
plain spread around him; its farms, villas, aqueducts no less
eloquent of death than the tombs by the wayside its still air and
the cloudless azure above speaking to a man's soul as with the voice
of eternity. Marcian was very sensible of such solemn influence.
More than once, in traversing this region, he had been moved to bow
his head in devotion purer than that which commonly inspired his
prayers, but to-day he knew not a moment's calm. All within him was
turbid, subject to evil thoughts.
A little before noon he made his first halt. Amid the ruins of a
spacious villa two or three peasant families had their miserable
home, with a vineyard, a patch of tilled soil, and a flock of goats
for their sustenance.
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