A noble bust in bronze of the Phidian Jupiter, with the sublime expanse of brow, the ambrosian curls and the beard loosely waving, as when he shook Olympus by his nod, and the earth trembled and the depth of Tartarus, stood on a marble pedestal facing the bookcase; and on the table, beside writing materials, leaves of parchment, an ornamental letter-case, a double inkstand and several reed pens, were scattered many gems and trinkets; signets and rings engraved in a style far surpassing any effort of the modern graver, vases of onyx and cut glass, and above all, the statue of a beautiful boy, holding a lamp of bronze suspended by a chain from his left hand, and in his right the needle used to refresh the wick. Nurtured as he had been from his youth upward among the magnates of the land, accustomed to magnificence and luxury till he had almost fancied that the world had nothing left of beautiful or new that he had not witnessed, Paul stood awhile, after the freedman had departed, gazing with mute admiration on the richness and taste displayed in all the details of this the scholar’s sanctum. The very atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity, who appeared to his excited fancy to smile serene protection on the pursuits of the blameless consul, inspired him with a sense of awful veneration, that did not easily or quickly pass away. For some moments, as he gradually recovered the elasticity of his spirits, he amused himself by examining the exquisitely wrought gems on the table; but after a little while, when Cicero came not, he crossed the room quietly to the bookshelves, and selecting a volume of Homer, drew it forth from its richly embossed case, and seating himself on the bronze settle with his back toward the door, had soon forgotten where he was, and the grave business which brought him thither, in the sublime simplicity of the blind rhapsodist. An hour or more elapsed thus; yet Paul took no note of time, nor moved at all except to unroll with his right hand the lower margin of the parchment as he read, while with the left he rolled up the top; so that nearly the same space of the manuscript remained constantly before his eyes, although the reader was continually advancing in the poem. At length the door opened noiselessly, and with a silent foot, shod in the light slippers which the Romans always wore when in the house, Cicero entered the apartment.