But here there creeps in the intense liturgical and ritual preoccupation of the author. Marius goes to find Cornelius at the Cecilian villa, and becomes by accident the spectator of a solemn celebration of the Eucharistic mystery. The description of the service is exquisitely, almost lusciously rendered; it satisfies Marius’ deep instinct for worship to the uttermost. But here the reader cannot help feeling a lack of proportion; the sensuous element triumphs over the intellectual. The choir of children, the white-robed youths, the bishop himself, “moving the hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysterious power ... or chanting in cadence of a grave sweetness the leading parts of the rite,” have a certain unreality about them, an impossible peace, an almost mawkishness of conception. It seems, perhaps, a hard and unsympathic criticism to make of a passage into which so much tender idealism has passed, but there is a taint as of the Sunday-school type about the incident, which not even its elaborate art can surmount. One feels in a false atmosphere, an atmosphere which is not only unrealisable but actually undesirable. It lacks the salt of humanity, and is touched with the unalloyed meekness which the manly heart, however tender, however responsive, does not really wish to enforce. The narrative then passes with a singular abruptness back to Marius’ literary preoccupations; and the intrusion of this chapter at this point may be held to be one of the few artistic mistakes of the book. It interrupts the progress, as if by a whimsical diversion, at a crucial point; it introduces the figure of the satirist Lucian, and relates a conversation with Hermotimus, a beautiful thing in itself, but with no real bearing on the development of the central theme. The upshot of the talk, which is in itself a delicious Platonic dialogue, full of humour and fancy, is that there is no certain criterion of philosophical ideas, but that the adoption of any form of philosophical belief is dictated by a preference and an instinct in the disciple; Lucian, employing a species of Socratic questioning, extinguishes, by a sort of affectionate and tender scepticism, the burning enthusiasm of the boy’s ardent philosophy. The real gist of the chapter lies in the sight which Marius has as he returns to Rome of a wayside crucifix; and the echoes of the conversation take shape in his mind, making him reflect whether it were possible that Love “in the greatness of his strength” could condescend to sustain Love “fainting by the road.” It is just a hint, like a ray of light through a half-opened door.