He had taken a high degree in classics, though Greek was never much to his taste.  It was “runaway stuff”; nervous and sensuous; it opened up too many vistas, philological and social, for his positive mind to assimilate with comfort.  Those particles alone—­there was something ambiguous, something almost disreputable, in their jocund pliability, their readiness to lend themselves to improper uses.  But Latin—­ah, Latin was different!  Even at his preparatory school, where he was known as a swot of the first water, he had displayed an unhealthy infatuation for that tongue; he loved its cold, lapidary construction; and while other boys played football or cricket, this withered little fellow used to lark about with a note-book, all by himself, torturing sensible English into its refractory and colourless periods and elaborating, without the help of a Gradus, those inept word-mosaics which are called Latin verses.  “Good fun,” he used to say, “and every bit as exciting as algebra,” as though that constituted a recommendation.  Often the good form master shook his head, and enquired anxiously whether he was feeling unwell, or had secret troubles of any kind.

“Oh, no, sir,” he would then reply, with a funny little laugh.  “Thank you, sir.  But please, sir!  Would you mind telling me whether PECUNIA> really comes from PECUS?  Because Adams minor (another swot) ways it doesn’t.”

Later on, at the University, he used the English language for the sake of convenience—­in order to make himself understood by Dons and Heads of Colleges.  His thoughts, his dreams, were in Latin.

Such a man, arriving almost penniless on Nepenthe, might have passed a torpid month or two, then drifted into the Club-set and gone to the dogs altogether.  Latin saved him.  He took to studying those earlier local writers who often composed in that tongue.  The Jesuitical smoothness, the saccharine felicity of authors like Giannettasio had just begun to pall on his fancy, when the antiquities fell into his hands.  It was like a draught of some generous southern wine, after a course of barley-water.  Here was Latin worth reading; rich, sinewy, idiomatic, full of flavour, masculine.  Flexible, yet terse.  Latin after his own heart; a cry across the centuries!

So bewitched was Mr. Eames with the grammar and syntax of the antiquities that he had already gone through the book three times ere realizing that this man, who could construct such flowing, glowing sentences, was actually writing about something.  Yes, he had something of uncommon interest to impart.  And a gentleman, by Jove!  So different from what one runs up against nowadays.  He had an original way of looking at things—­a human way.  Very human.  Those quaint streaks of credulity, those whimsical blasphemies, those spicy Court anecdotes dropped, as it were, in the smoking room of a patrician club—­a rare old fellow!  He would have given anything to have made his acquaintance.