第 29 页

celebrating the dead, both the known and the unknown, the children of

Sextius Pompeius Justus, the departed Marcus Servilius Quartus, Hilarius

Fuscus, Rabirius Hermodorus; without counting the sepulchres venturously

ascribed to Seneca and the Horatii and Curiatii. And finally there is the

most extraordinary and gigantic of all the tombs, that known as Casale

Rotondo, which is so large that it has been possible to establish a

farmhouse and an olive garden on its substructures, which formerly upheld

a double rotunda, adorned with Corinthian pilasters, large candelabra,

and scenic masks.*

* Some believe this tomb to have been that of Messalla Corvinus,

the historian and poet, a friend of Augustus and Horace; others

ascribe it to his son, Aurelius Messallinus Cotta.--Trans.

Pierre, having driven in a cab as far as the tomb of Caecilia Metella,

continued his excursion on foot, going slowly towards Casale Rotondo. In

many places the old pavement appears--large blocks of basaltic lava, worn

into deep ruts that jolt the best-hung vehicles. Among the ruined tombs

on either hand run bands of grass, the neglected grass of cemeteries,

scorched by the summer suns and sprinkled with big violet thistles and

tall sulphur-wort. Parapets of dry stones, breast high, enclose the

russet roadsides, which resound with the crepitation of grasshoppers;

and, beyond, the Campagna stretches, vast and bare, as far as the eye can

see. A parasol pine, a eucalyptus, some olive or fig trees, white with

dust, alone rise up near the road at infrequent intervals. On the left

the ruddy arches of the Acqua Claudia show vigorously in the meadows, and

stretches of poorly cultivated land, vineyards, and little farms, extend

to the blue and lilac Sabine and Alban hills, where Frascati, Rocca di

Papa, and Albano set bright spots, which grow and whiten as one gets

nearer to them. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the houseless,

treeless plain grows and spreads with vast, broad ripples, extraordinary

ocean-like simplicity and grandeur, a long, straight line alone parting

it from the sky. At the height of summer all burns and flares on this

limitless prairie, then of a ruddy gold; but in September a green tinge

begins to suffuse the ocean of herbage, which dies away in the pink and

mauve and vivid blue of the fine sunsets.

As Pierre, quite alone and in a dreary mood, slowly paced the endless,

flat highway, that resurrection of the past which he had beheld on the

Palatine again confronted his mind's eye. On either hand the tombs once

more rose up intact, with marble of dazzling whiteness. Had not the head

of a colossal statue been found, mingled with fragments of huge sphinxes,

at the foot of yonder vase-shaped mass of bricks? He seemed to see the

entire colossal statue standing again between the huge, crouching beasts.

Farther on a beautiful headless statue of a woman had been discovered in

the cella of a sepulchre, and he beheld it, again whole, with features

expressive of grace and strength smiling upon life. The inscriptions also

became perfect; he could read and understand them at a glance, as if

living among those dead ones of two thousand years ago. And the road,

too, became peopled: the chariots thundered, the armies tramped along,

the people of Rome jostled him with the feverish agitation of great

communities. It was a return of the times of the Flavians or the

Antonines, the palmy years of the empire, when the pomp of the Appian

Way, with its grand sepulchres, carved and adorned like temples, attained

its apogee. What a monumental Street of Death, what an approach to Rome,

that highway, straight as an arrow, where with the extraordinary pomp of

their pride, which had survived their dust, the great dead greeted the

traveller, ushered him into the presence of the living! He may well have

wondered among what sovereign people, what masters of the world, he was

about to find himself--a nation which had committed to its dead the duty

of telling strangers that it allowed nothing whatever to perish--that its

dead, like its city, remained eternal and glorious in monuments of

extraordinary vastness! To think of it--the foundations of a fortress,

and a tower sixty feet in diameter, that one woman might be laid to rest!

And then, far away, at the end of the superb, dazzling highway, bordered

with the marble of its funereal palaces, Pierre, turning round,

distinctly beheld the Palatine, with the marble of its imperial

palaces--the huge assemblage of palaces whose omnipotence had dominated

the world!

But suddenly he started: two carabiniers had just appeared among the

ruins. The spot was not safe; the authorities watched over tourists even

in broad daylight. And later on came another meeting which caused him

some emotion. He perceived an ecclesiastic, a tall old man, in a black

cassock, edged and girt with red; and was surprised to recognise Cardinal

Boccanera, who had quitted the roadway, and was slowly strolling along

the band of grass, among the tall thistles and sulphur-wort. With his

head lowered and his feet brushing against the fragments of the tombs,

the Cardinal did not even see Pierre. The young priest courteously turned

aside, surprised to find him so far from home and alone. Then, on

perceiving a heavy coach, drawn by two black horses, behind a building,

he understood matters. A footman in black livery was waiting motionless

beside the carriage, and the coachman had not quitted his box. And Pierre

remembered that the Cardinals were not expected to walk in Rome, so that

they were compelled to drive into the country when they desired to take

exercise. But what haughty sadness, what solitary and, so to say,

ostracised grandeur there was about that tall, thoughtful old man, thus

forced to seek the desert, and wander among the tombs, in order to

breathe a little of the evening air!

Pierre had lingered there for long hours; the twilight was coming on, and

once again he witnessed a lovely sunset. On his left the Campagna became

blurred, and assumed a slaty hue, against which the yellowish arcades of

the aqueduct showed very plainly, while the Alban hills, far away, faded

into pink. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the planet sank among a

number of cloudlets, figuring an archipelago of gold in an ocean of dying

embers. And excepting the sapphire sky, studded with rubies, above the

endless line of the Campagna, which was likewise changed into a sparkling

lake, the dull green of the herbage turning to a liquid emerald tint,

there was nothing to be seen, neither a hillock nor a flock--nothing,

indeed, but Cardinal Boccanera's black figure, erect among the tombs, and

looking, as it were, enlarged as it stood out against the last purple

flush of the sunset.

Early on the following morning Pierre, eager to see everything, returned

to the Appian Way in order to visit the catacomb of St. Calixtus, the

most extensive and remarkable of the old Christian cemeteries, and one,

too, where several of the early popes were buried. You ascend through a

scorched garden, past olives and cypresses, reach a shanty of boards and

plaster in which a little trade in "articles of piety" is carried on, and

there a modern and fairly easy flight of steps enables you to descend.

Pierre fortunately found there some French Trappists, who guard these

catacombs and show them to strangers. One brother was on the point of

going down with two French ladies, the mother and daughter, the former

still comely and the other radiant with youth. They stood there smiling,

though already slightly frightened, while the monk lighted some long,

slim candles. He was a man with a bossy brow, the large, massive jaw of

an obstinate believer and pale eyes bespeaking an ingenuous soul.

"Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe," he said to Pierre, "you've come just in time. If

the ladies are willing, you had better come with us; for three Brothers

are already below with people, and you would have a long time to wait.

This is the great season for visitors."

The ladies politely nodded, and the Trappist handed a candle to the

priest. In all probability neither mother nor daughter was devout, for

both glanced askance at their new companion's cassock, and suddenly

became serious. Then they all went down and found themselves in a narrow

subterranean corridor. "Take care, mesdames," repeated the Trappist,

lighting the ground with his candle. "Walk slowly, for there are

projections and slopes."

Then, in a shrill voice full of extraordinary conviction, he began his

explanations. Pierre had descended in silence, his heart beating with

emotion. Ah! how many times, indeed, in his innocent seminary days, had

he not dreamt of those catacombs of the early Christians, those asylums

of the primitive faith! Even recently, while writing his book, he had

often thought of them as of the most ancient and venerable remains of

that community of the lowly and simple, for the return of which he

called. But his brain was full of pages written by poets and great prose

writers. He had beheld the catacombs through the magnifying glass of

those imaginative authors, and had believed them to be vast, similar to

subterranean cities, with broad highways and spacious halls, fit for the

accommodation of vast crowds. And now how poor and humble the reality!

"Well, yes," said the Trappist in reply to the ladies' questions, "the

corridor is scarcely more than a yard in width; two persons could not

pass along side by side. How they dug it? Oh! it was simple enough. A

family or a burial association needed a place of sepulchre. Well, a first

gallery was excavated with pickaxes in soil of this description--granular

tufa, as it is called--a reddish substance, as you can see, both soft and

yet resistant, easy to work and at the same time waterproof. In a word,

just the substance that was needed, and one, too, that has preserved the

remains of the buried in a wonderful way." He paused and brought the

flamelet of his candle near to the compartments excavated on either hand

of the passage. "Look," he continued, "these are the _loculi_. Well, a

subterranean gallery was dug, and on both sides these compartments were

hollowed out, one above the other. The bodies of the dead were laid in

them, for the most part simply wrapped in shrouds. Then the aperture was

closed with tiles or marble slabs, carefully cemented. So, as you can

see, everything explains itself. If other families joined the first one,

or the burial association became more numerous, fresh galleries were

added to those already filled. Passages were excavated on either hand, in

every sense; and, indeed, a second and lower storey, at times even a

third, was dug out. And here, you see, we are in a gallery which is

certainly thirteen feet high. Now, you may wonder how they raised the

bodies to place them in the compartments of the top tier. Well, they did

not raise them to any such height; in all their work they kept on going

lower and lower, removing more and more of the soil as the compartments

became filled. And in this wise, in these catacombs of St. Calixtus, in

less than four centuries, the Christians excavated more than ten miles of

galleries, in which more than a million of their dead must have been laid

to rest. Now, there are dozens of catacombs; the environs of Rome are

honeycombed with them. Think of that, and perhaps you will be able to

form some idea of the vast number of people who were buried in this

manner."

Pierre listened, feeling greatly impressed. He had once visited a coal

pit in Belgium, and he here found the same narrow passages, the same

heavy, stifling atmosphere, the same nihility of darkness and silence.

The flamelets of the candles showed merely like stars in the deep gloom;

they shed no radiance around. And he at last understood the character of

this funereal, termite-like labour--these chance burrowings continued

according to requirements, without art, method, or symmetry. The rugged

soil was ever ascending and descending, the sides of the gallery snaked:

neither plumb-line nor square had been used. All this, indeed, had simply

been a work of charity and necessity, wrought by simple, willing

grave-diggers, illiterate craftsmen, with the clumsy handiwork of the

decline and fall. Proof thereof was furnished by the inscriptions and

emblems on the marble slabs. They reminded one of the childish drawings

which street urchins scrawl upon blank walls.

"You see," the Trappist continued, "most frequently there is merely a

name; and sometimes there is no name, but simply the words _In Pace_. At

other times there is an emblem, the dove of purity, the palm of

martyrdom, or else the fish whose name in Greek is composed of five

letters which, as initials, signify: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God,

Saviour.'"

He again brought his candle near to the marble slabs, and the palm could

be distinguished: a central stroke, whence started a few oblique lines;

and then came the dove or the fish, roughly outlined, a zigzag indicating

a tail, two bars representing the bird's feet, while a round point

simulated an eye. And the letters of the short inscriptions were all

askew, of various sizes, often quite misshapen, as in the coarse

handwriting of the ignorant and simple.

However, they reached a crypt, a sort of little hall, where the graves of

several popes had been found; among others that of Sixtus II, a holy

martyr, in whose honour there was a superbly engraved metrical

inscription set up by Pope Damasus. Then, in another hall, a family vault

of much the same size, decorated at a later stage, with naive mural

paintings, the spot where St. Cecilia's body had been discovered was

shown. And the explanations continued. The Trappist dilated on the

paintings, drawing from them a confirmation of every dogma and belief,

baptism, the Eucharist, the resurrection, Lazarus arising from the tomb,

Jonas cast up by the whale, Daniel in the lions' den, Moses drawing water

from the rock, and Christ--shown beardless, as was the practice in the