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leading to a portico running
along the whole front of the house, with the principal chambers
opening into it. Behind lay another court, serving as stables for the
horses and mules, as farmyard, and with the quarters of the slaves
around it, and higher up there stretched a dense pine forest protecting
the whole establishment from avalanches and torrents of stones from
the mountain peak above.
Under the portico, whose pillars were cut from the richly-coloured
native marbles, reposed the two friends on low couches.
One was a fine-looking man, with a grand bald forehead, encircled with
a wreath of oak, showing that in his time he had rescued a Roman's life.
He also wore a richly-embroidered purple toga, the token of high civic
rank, for he had put on his full insignia as a senator and of consular
rank to do honour to the ceremonial. Indeed he would not have
abstained from accompanying the procession, but that his guest, though
no more aged than himself, was manifestly unequal to the rugged
expedition, begun fasting in the morning chill and concluded, likewise
fasting, in the noonday heat. Still, it would scarcely have distressed
those sturdy limbs, well developed and preserved by Roman training,
never permitted by him to degenerate into effeminacy. And as his fine
countenance and well- knit frame testified, Marcus AEmilius
Victorinus inherited no small share of genuine Roman blood. His noble
name might be derived through clientela, and his lineage had a Gallic
intermixture; but the true Quirite predominated in his character and
temperament. The citizenship of his family dated back beyond the first
establishment of the colony, and rank, property, and personal qualities
alike rendered him the first man in the district, its chief magistrate, and
protector from the Visigoths, who claimed it as part of their kingdom of
Aquitania.
So much of the spirit of Vercingetorix survived among the remnant of
his tribe that Arvernia had never been overrun and conquered, but had
held out until actually ceded by one of the degenerate Augusti at
Ravenna, and then favourable terms had been negotiated, partly by

AEmilius the Senator, as he was commonly called, and partly by the
honoured friend who sat beside him, another relic of the good old times
when Southern Gaul enjoyed perfect peace as a favoured province of
the Empire. This guest was a man of less personal beauty than the
Senator, and more bowed and aged, but with care and ill-health more
than years, for the two had been comrades in school, fellow-soldiers
and magistrates, working simultaneously, and with firm, mutual trust
all their days.
The dress of the visitor was shaped like that of the senator, but of
somewhat richer and finer texture. He too wore the TOGA
PRAETEXTATA, but he had a large gold cross hanging on his breast
and an episcopal ring on his finger; and instead of the wreath of bay he
might have worn, and which encircled his bust in the Capitol, the
scanty hair on his finely-moulded head showed the marks of the
tonsure. His brow was a grand and expansive one; his gray eyes were
full of varied expression, keen humour, and sagacity; a lofty devotion
sometimes changing his countenance in a wonderful manner, even in
the present wreck of his former self, when the cheeks showed furrows
worn by care and suffering, and the once flexible and resolute mouth
had fallen in from loss of teeth. For this was the scholar, soldier, poet,
gentleman, letter-writer, statesman, Sidonius Apollinaris, who had
stood on the steps of the Imperial throne of the West, had been crowned
as an orator in the Capitol, and then had been called by the exigences of
his country to give up his learned ease and become the protector of the
Arvernii as a patriot Bishop, where he had well and nobly served his
God and his country, and had won the respect, not only of the Catholic
Gauls but of the Arian Goths. Jealousy and evil tongues had, however,
prevailed to cause his banishment from his beloved hills, and when he
repaired to the court of King Euric to solicit permission to return, he
was long detained there, and had only just obtained license to go back
to his See. He had arrived only a day or two previously at the villa,
exhausted by his journey, and though declaring that his dear mountain
breezes must needs restore him, and that it was a joy to inhale them, yet,
as he heard of the oppressions that were coming on his people, the
mountain gales could only 'a momentary bliss bestow,' and AEmilius
justly feared that the decay of his health had gone too far for even the

breezes and baths of Arvernia to reinvigorate him.
His own mountain estate, where dwelt his son,