THE DOOM OF THE TRAITOR
But what, meantime, had become of the pursuers? Baffled in their effort
to seize their prey, and fearful of losing their way in this tangled
labyrinth they had sullenly retreated, tracing their steps by the
chalk-marks they had made upon the walls. At last, they returned to the
stairway by which they had entered and so found their way above ground.
"This is no work for soldiers," muttered the disgusted officer, "hunting
these rats through their underground runs. They are a skulking set of
vermin."
"What has become of that coward Greek?" asked the second in command. "He
didn't seem to half like the job."
"Is he not here? Then he must have made his escape," said the Centurion.
"But if he is caught in that rat-trap, there let him stay. I'll not risk
a Roman soldier's life to save a craven Greek," and he gave the command
to march back to the city.
Meanwhile, how fares it with the unhappy Isidorus?
When the soldiers caught sight of the Christians and began their
pursuit, he had no heart to join in it, and lingered in the vaulted
chamber where the funeral rites had been interrupted. The first thing
that caught his eye was the epitaph of the noble Adauctus. With
quavering voice he read the lines we have already given: "With
unfaltering faith, despising the lord of the world, having confessed
Christ, thou dids't seek the celestial realms."
"And this was he," he soliloquised, "who gave up name, and fame, and
fortune, high office, and the favour of the Emperor, and embraced shame,
and persecution, and a cruel death for conscience sake. How grand he
was that day when I warned him of the machinations of his foes--so
undaunted and calm. But grander he is as he lies in the majesty of death
behind that slab. I felt myself a coward in his living presence then,
but in the presence of this dead map, I feel a greater coward still. His
memory haunts, it tortures me, I must away!" and turning from, the
chamber, he wandered by the dim light of his taper down the grave-lined
corridor, pausing at times to read their humble inscriptions:--
Rudely written, but each letter
Full of hope, and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the here and the hereafter.
And their calmness and peacefulness seemed to reproach his
conscience-smitten and unrestful soul.
Listlessly he turned into another chamber, when, what was it that met
his startled vision!--
VALERIA DORMIT IN PACE.
There slept in the sleep of death another victim of his perfidy, one
whom he had longed to save, one whose beauty had fascinated his
imagination, whose goodness had touched his heart. Overcome by his
emotion he flung himself on the ground, and bursting into convulsive
sobs that shook his frame, he passionately kissed the cold stone slab
on which was written the much-loved name.
"Would that I, too, slept the sleep of death," he exclaimed; "if I might
also sleep in peace; if I might seek celestial realms.... So near and
yet so far ... A great gulf fixed ... Never to see thee more ... in time
nor in eternity."
Here the drip, drip of water which had infiltrated through the roof and
fell upon the floor, jarred upon his excited nerves, and suddenly, with
a hissing splash, fell a great drop on his taper and utterly
extinguished its light. For a moment, so intense and sudden was the
darkness, he was almost dazed; but instantly the greatness of his peril
flashed upon his mind.
"Lost! Lost!" he frantically shrieked. "The outer darkness, the eternal
wailing while she is in the light of life! Well I remember now the words
of Primitius, in this very vault, as he spoke of the joys of heaven, the
pains of hell;" and in the darkness he tried to trace with his finger
the words, "DORMIT IN PACE"--"Sleeps in peace."
_"Vale! Vale! Eternum Vale!"_ he sobbed, as he kissed once more the
marble slab, "an everlasting farewell! I must try to find the
Christians, or the soldiers, or a way of escape from this prison-house
of graves."
He groped his way to the door of the vault and listened, oh! so
eagerly--all the faculties of his body and mind seeming concentered in
his sense of hearing. But "the darkness gave no token and the silence
was unbroken." Nay, so awful was the stillness that brooded over this
valley of death, that it seemed as if the motion of the earth on its
axis must be audible, and the pulses of his temples were to his tortured
ear like the roaring of the distant sea.
Venturing forth, he groped his way from grave to grave, from vault to
vault, from corridor to corridor, but no light, no sound, no hope! Ever
denser seemed the darkness, ever deeper the silence, ever more appalling
the gloom. For hours he wandered on and on till, faint with hunger,
parched with thirst, the throbbings, of his heart shaking his unnerved
frame, he fell into a merciful swoon from which he never awoke.
Centuries after, an explorer of this vast necropolis found crouching in
the corner of one of its chambers a fleshless skeleton, and on the tomb
above he read the words, VALERIA DORMIT IN PACE. Was it accident or
Providence, or some strange instinct of locality that had brought this
poor blighted wreck to breathe his latest sigh at the tomb of one whom
he had so loved and so wronged?
The peasants of the Campagna tell to the present day of certain strange
sounds heard at midnight from those hollow vaults--at times like the
hooting of an owl, at times like the wailing of the wind, and at times,
they whisper with bated breath, like the moaning of a soul in pain. And
the guides to the Catacombs aver, that ever on the anniversary of the
martyrdom of Valeria Callirhoë, sighs and groans echo through the hollow
vaults--the sighs and groans, tradition whispers, of a wretched apostate
who in the ages of persecution betrayed the early Christians to a
martyr's doom.
[Illustration: ROMAN COLUMRARIUM
The Columbaria were the Pagan Roman underground sepulchres. In the many
niche-like dovecots--hence the name were placed the urns containing the
ashes of the dead whose bodies had been burned on the funeral pile.]
[Illustration]