noon
Concurring , indeed , with the condition of a Roman soldier , it was certainly something far more than the expression of military hardness , or ascêsis ; and what was earnest , or even austere , in the landscape they had traversed together , seemed to have been waiting for the passage of this figure to interpret or inform it . Again , as in his early days with Flavian , a vivid personal presence broke through the dreamy idealism , which had almost come to doubt of other men 's reality : reassuringly , indeed , yet not without some sense of a constraining tyranny over him from without . For Cornelius , returning from the campaign , to take up his quarters on the Palatine , in the imperial guard , seemed to carry about with him , in that privileged world of comely usage to which he belonged , the atmosphere of some still more jealously exclusive circle . They halted on the morrow at noon , not at an inn , but at the house of one of the young soldier 's friends , whom they found absent , indeed , in consequence of the -LSB- 170 -RSB- plague in those parts , so that after a mid-day rest only , they proceeded again on their journey . The great room of the villa , to which they were admitted , had lain long untouched ; and the dust rose , as they entered , into the slanting bars of sunlight , that fell through the half-closed shutters . It was here , to while away the time , that Cornelius bethought himself of displaying to his new friend the various articles and ornaments of his knightly array -- the breastplate , the sandals and cuirass , lacing them on , one by one , with the assistance of Marius , and finally the great golden bracelet on the right arm , conferred on him by his general for an act of valour . And as he gleamed there , amid that odd interchange of light and shade , with the staff of a silken standard firm in his hand , Marius felt as if he were face to face , for the first time , with some new knighthood or chivalry , just then coming into the world .