Don Calixto and the Canon were very anxious to visit the Catacombs.
Cæsar knew that the visit is not entirely agreeable, and attempted to
dissuade them from their intention.
“I don’t know whether you gentlemen know that one has to spend the
entire day there.”
“Without lunch?” asked the Canon.
“Yes.”
“Oh, no; that is impossible.”
“One has to sacrifice oneself for the sake of Christianity,” said
Cæsar.
“You haven’t much desire to sacrifice yourself,” retorted Don Calixto.
“Because I believe it is damp and unwholesome down there, and a
Christian bronchitis would not be wholly pleasant, despite its religious
origin. And besides, as you already know, one must go without food.”
“We might eat something there,” said Don Justo.
“Eat there!” exclaimed Cæsar. “Eat a slice of ham, in front of the
niches of the Catacombs! It would make me sick.”
“It wouldn’t me,” replied the Canon.
“In front of the tombs of martyrs and saints!”
“Even if they were saints, they ate too,” replied the Canon, with his
excellent good sense.
Cæsar had to agree that even if they were saints, they ate.
There was a French family at the hotel who were also thinking of going
to see the Catacombs, and Don Calixto and Don Justo decided to go the
same day with them. The French family consisted of a Breton gentleman,
tall and whiskered, who had been at sea; his wife, who looked like a
village woman; and the daughter, a slender, pale, sad young lady. They
had with them, half governess, half maid, a lean peasant-woman with a
suspicious air.
The young lady confessed to Cæsar that she had been dreaming of the
Catacombs for a long while. She knew the description Chateaubriand gives
of them in _Les Martyres_ by heart.
The next day the French family in one landau, and Don Calixto with the
Canon and Cæsar in another, went to see the Catacombs.
The French family had brought a fat, smiling abbé as cicerone.
Five persons couldn’t get inside the landau, and the Breton gentleman
had to sit by the driver. Don Calixto offered him a seat in his
carriage, but the Breton, who must have been obstinate as a mule, said
no, that from the driver’s seat he enjoyed more of the panorama.
They halted a moment, on the abbé’s advice, at the Baths of Caracalla,
and went through them. The cicerone explained where the different
bathing-rooms had been and the size of the pools. Those cyclopean
buildings, those high, high arches, those enormous walls, left Cæsar
overcome.
One couldn’t understand a thing like this except in a town which had a
mania for the gigantic, the titanic.
They left the baths and started along. They followed the Via di Porta
San Sebastiano, between two walls. They left behind the imposing ruins
of the Baths of Caracalla and various establishments for archeological
reconstructions, and the carriage stopped at the gate of the Catacombs.
They went in, guided by the abbé, and arrived at a sort of office.
They each paid a lira for a taper which a friar was handing out, and
they joined a group of other people, without quite knowing what they
expected next. In the group there were two German Dominicans, a tall one
whose fiery red beard hung to his waist, and a slim one, with a nose
like a knife.
_IRREVERENT CICERONE_
It was not long before another numerous group of tourists came out of a
hole in the floor, and among them was a Trappist brother who came over
to where Don Calixto and Cæsar were. The Trappist carried a stick,
and a taper twisted in the end of the stick. He asked if everybody
understood French; any one that didn’t could wait for another group.
“I don’t understand it,” said the Canon.
“I will translate what he says, to you,” replied Cæsar.
“All right,” answered the Canon.
“_En avant, messieurs_,” said the Trappist, lighting his taper, and
requesting them all to do the same.
They went around giving one another a light, and with their little
candles aflame they began to descend into the Catacombs.
They went in by a gallery as narrow as one in a mine, which once in a
while broadened into bigger spaces.
In certain spots there were openings in the roof.
Cæsar had never thought about what the celebrated Catacombs would be
like, but he had not expected them so poor and so sinister.
The sensation they caused was disagreeable, a sensation of choking, of
suffocation, without one’s really getting any impression of grandeur.
The place seemed like an abandoned ant-hill. The wide spaces that opened
out at the sides of the passage were chapels, the monk said.
The Trappist cicerone contributed to removing any serious feelings with
his chatter and his jokes. Being familiar with these tombs, he had lost
respect for them, as sacristans lose it for the saints they brush the
dust off of with a feather-duster. Moreover, he judged everything by an
esthetic criterion, completely devoid of respect; for him there were
only sepulchres with artistic character, or without it; of a good or
a poor period; and the latter sort he struck contemptuously with his
stick.
The marine Breton was irritated, and asked Cæsar several times:
“Why is that permitted?” “I don’t know,” answered Cæsar.
The monk made extraordinary remarks.
Explaining the life of the Christians in the earliest eras of
Christianity, he said:
“In this century the habits of the pontiffs were so lax that the
Pope had to go out accompanied by two persons to insure his modest
behaviour.”
“Oh, oh!” said a young Frenchman, in a tone of vexation.
_“Ah! C’est L’histoire,”_ replied the monk.
Cæsar translated what the Trappist had said, to Don Calixto and the
Canon, and they were both really perplexed.
They followed the long, narrow galleries. It was a strange effect,
seeing the procession of tourists with their burning candles. One didn’t
notice the modern clothes and the ladies’ hats, and from a distance the
procession lighted by the little flames of the candles, had a mysterious
look.
At the tail of the crowd walked two men who spoke English. One was a
“gentleman” little versed in archeological questions; the other a tall
person with the face of a scholar. Cæsar drew near them to listen. The
one was explaining to his companion everything they saw as they went
along, the signification of the emblems cut in the tablets, and the
funerary customs of the Christians.
“Didn’t they put crosses?” asked the unlearned gentleman.
“No,” said the other. “It is said that for the Romans the _crux_
represented the gallows! Thus the earliest representation of the
Crucified is a drawing in the Kirchnerian museum, which shows a
Christian kneeling before a man with a donkey’s head, who is nailed to a
cross. In Greek letters one reads: ‘Alexamenes adores his God.’ They say
this drawing comes from the Palace of the Cæsars, and it is considered
to be a caricature of Christ, drawn by a Roman soldier on a wall.”
“Didn’t they put up images of Christ, either?”
“No. You do not consider that they were at the height of the discussion
as to whether Christ was ugly or beautiful.”
The tall gentleman got involved in a long dissertation as to what
motives they had had, some to insist that Christ’s person was of great
beauty, others to affirm that it was of terrible ugliness.
Cæsar would have liked to go on listening to what this gentleman said,
but Don Justo joined him. The Trappist was in front of two mummies,
explaining something, and he wanted Cæsar to translate what he was
saying.
Cæsar did this bit of interpreting for him. The candles were beginning
to burn out and it was necessary to leave.
The cicerone took them rapidly along a gallery at whose end there was a
stairway, and they issued into the sunlight. The monk extinguished the
taper on his stick, and began crying:
“Now, gentlemen, do you want any scapulars, medals, chocolate?”
Cæsar looked over his companions in the expedition. The Canon
was indifferent. The old maritime Breton showed signs of profound
indignation, and his daughter, the little French mystic, had tears in
her eyes.
“That poor little French girl, who arrived here so full of enthusiasm,
has come out of these Catacombs like a rat out of a sewer,” said Cæsar.
“And why so?” asked Don Calixto.
“Because of the things the monk said. He was really scandalous.”
“It is true,” said the Canon gravely. “I never would have believed it.”
_“Roma veduta, fede perduta,”_ said Don Calixto. “And as for you,
Cæsar, hasn’t this visit interested you?”
“Yes, I have been interested in trying to keep from catching cold.”