But that night the sublime spectacle presented itself to Pierre with a

calm, blinding, desperate grandeur. At first, just above the dome of St.

Peter’s, the sun, descending in a spotless, deeply limpid sky, proved yet

so resplendent that one’s eyes could not face its brightness. And in this

resplendency the dome seemed to be incandescent, you would have said a

dome of liquid silver; whilst the surrounding districts, the house-roofs

of the Borgo, were as though changed into a lake of live embers. Then, as

the sun was by degrees inclined, it lost some of its blaze, and one could

look; and soon afterwards sinking with majestic slowness it disappeared

behind the dome, which showed forth darkly blue, while the orb, now

entirely hidden, set an aureola around it, a glory like a crown of

flaming rays. And then began the dream, the dazzling symbol, the singular

illumination of the row of windows beneath the cupola which were

transpierced by the light and looked like the ruddy mouths of furnaces,

in such wise that one might have imagined the dome to be poised upon a

brazier, isolated, in the air, as though raised and upheld by the

violence of the fire. It all lasted barely three minutes. Down below the

jumbled roofs of the Borgo became steeped in violet vapour, sank into

increasing gloom, whilst from the Janiculum to Monte Mario the horizon

showed its firm black line. And it was the sky then which became all

purple and gold, displaying the infinite placidity of a supernatural

radiance above the earth which faded into nihility. Finally the last

window reflections were extinguished, the glow of the heavens departed,

and nothing remained but the vague, fading roundness of the dome of St.

Peter’s amidst the all-invading night.

And, by some subtle connection of ideas, Pierre at that moment once again

saw rising before him the lofty, sad, declining figures of Cardinal

Boccanera and old Orlando. On the evening of that day when he had learnt

to know them, one after the other, both so great in the obstinacy of

their hope, they seemed to be there, erect on the horizon above their

annihilated city, on the fringe of the heavens which death apparently was

about to seize. Was everything then to crumble with them? was everything

to fade away and disappear in the falling night following upon

accomplished Time?

V.

ON the following day Narcisse Habert came in great worry to tell Pierre

that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo complained of being unwell, and asked for

a delay of two or three days before receiving the young priest and

considering the matter of his audience. Pierre was thus reduced to

inaction, for he dared not make any attempt elsewhere in view of seeing

the Pope. He had been so frightened by Nani and others that he feared he

might jeopardise everything by inconsiderate endeavours. And so he began

to visit Rome in order to occupy his leisure.

His first visit was for the ruins of the Palatine. Going out alone one

clear morning at eight o’clock, he presented himself at the entrance in

the Via San Teodoro, an iron gateway flanked by the lodges of the

keepers. One of the latter at once offered his services, and though

Pierre would have preferred to roam at will, following the bent of his

dream, he somehow did not like to refuse the offer of this man, who spoke

French very distinctly, and smiled in a very good-natured way. He was a

squatly built little man, a former soldier, some sixty years of age, and

his square-cut, ruddy face was barred by thick white moustaches.

“Then will you please follow me, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said he. “I can see

that you are French, Monsieur l’Abbe. I’m a Piedmontese myself, but I

know the French well enough; I was with them at Solferino. Yes, yes,

whatever people may say, one can’t forget old friendships. Here, this

way, please, to the right.”

Raising his eyes, Pierre had just perceived the line of cypresses edging

the plateau of the Palatine on the side of the Tiber; and in the delicate

blue atmosphere the intense greenery of these trees showed like a black

fringe. They alone attracted the eye; the slope, of a dusty, dirty grey,

stretched out bare and devastated, dotted by a few bushes, among which

peeped fragments of ancient walls. All was instinct with the ravaged,

leprous sadness of a spot handed over to excavation, and where only men

of learning could wax enthusiastic.

“The palaces of Tiberius, Caligula, and the Flavians are up above,”

resumed the guide. “We must keep then for the end and go round.”

Nevertheless he took a few steps to the left, and pausing before an

excavation, a sort of grotto in the hillside, exclaimed: “This is the

Lupercal den where the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Just here at the

entry used to stand the Ruminal fig-tree which sheltered the twins.”

Pierre could not restrain a smile, so convinced was the tone in which the

old soldier gave these explanations, proud as he was of all the ancient

glory, and wont to regard the wildest legends as indisputable facts.

However, when the worthy man pointed out some vestiges of Roma

Quadrata--remnants of walls which really seemed to date from the

foundation of the city--Pierre began to feel interested, and a first

touch of emotion made his heart beat. This emotion was certainly not due

to any beauty of scene, for he merely beheld a few courses of tufa

blocks, placed one upon the other and uncemented. But a past which had

been dead for seven and twenty centuries seemed to rise up before him,

and those crumbling, blackened blocks, the foundation of such a mighty

eclipse of power and splendour, acquired extraordinary majesty.

Continuing their inspection, they went on, skirting the hillside. The

outbuildings of the palaces must have descended to this point; fragments

of porticoes, fallen beams, columns and friezes set up afresh, edged the

rugged path which wound through wild weeds, suggesting a neglected

cemetery; and the guide repeated the words which he had used day by day

for ten years past, continuing to enunciate suppositions as facts, and

giving a name, a destination, a history, to every one of the fragments.

“The house of Augustus,” he said at last, pointing towards some masses of

earth and rubbish.

Thereupon Pierre, unable to distinguish anything, ventured to inquire:

“Where do you mean?”

“Oh!” said the man, “it seems that the walls were still to be seen at the

end of the last century. But it was entered from the other side, from the

Sacred Way. On this side there was a huge balcony which overlooked the

Circus Maximus so that one could view the sports. However, as you can

see, the greater part of the palace is still buried under that big garden

up above, the garden of the Villa Mills. When there’s money for fresh

excavations it will be found again, together with the temple of Apollo

and the shrine of Vesta which accompanied it.”

Turning to the left, he next entered the Stadium, the arena erected for

foot-racing, which stretched beside the palace of Augustus; and the

priest’s interest was now once more awakened. It was not that he found

himself in presence of well-preserved and monumental remains, for not a

column had remained erect, and only the right-hand walls were still

standing. But the entire plan of the building had been traced, with the

goals at either end, the porticus round the course, and the colossal

imperial tribune which, after being on the left, annexed to the house of

Augustus, had afterwards opened on the right, fitting into the palace of

Septimius Severus. And while Pierre looked on all the scattered remnants,

his guide went on chattering, furnishing the most copious and precise

information, and declaring that the gentlemen who directed the

excavations had mentally reconstructed the Stadium in each and every

particular, and were even preparing a most exact plan of it, showing all

the columns in their proper order and the statues in their niches, and

even specifying the divers sorts of marble which had covered the walls.

“Oh! the directors are quite at ease,” the old soldier eventually added

with an air of infinite satisfaction. “There will be nothing for the

Germans to pounce on here. They won’t be allowed to set things

topsy-turvy as they did at the Forum, where everybody’s at sea since they

came along with their wonderful science!”

Pierre--a Frenchman--smiled, and his interest increased when, by broken

steps and wooden bridges thrown over gaps, he followed the guide into the

great ruins of the palace of Severus. Rising on the southern point of the

Palatine, this palace had overlooked the Appian Way and the Campagna as

far as the eye could reach. Nowadays, almost the only remains are the

substructures, the subterranean halls contrived under the arches of the

terraces, by which the plateau of the hill was enlarged; and yet these

dismantled substructures suffice to give some idea of the triumphant

palace which they once upheld, so huge and powerful have they remained in

their indestructible massiveness. Near by arose the famous Septizonium,

the tower with the seven tiers of arcades, which only finally disappeared

in the sixteenth century. One of the palace terraces yet juts out upon

cyclopean arches and from it the view is splendid. But all the rest is a

commingling of massive yet crumbling walls, gaping depths whose ceilings

have fallen, endless corridors and vast halls of doubtful destination.

Well cared for by the new administration, swept and cleansed of weeds,

the ruins have lost their romantic wildness and assumed an aspect of bare

and mournful grandeur. However, flashes of living sunlight often gild the

ancient walls, penetrate by their breaches into the black halls, and

animate with their dazzlement the mute melancholy of all this dead

splendour now exhumed from the earth in which it slumbered for centuries.

Over the old ruddy masonry, stripped of its pompous marble covering, is

the purple mantle of the sunlight, draping the whole with imperial glory

once more.

For more than two hours already Pierre had been walking on, and yet he

still had to visit all the earlier palaces on the north and east of the

plateau. “We must go back,” said the guide, “the gardens of the Villa

Mills and the convent of San Bonaventura stop the way. We shall only be

able to pass on this side when the excavations have made a clearance. Ah!

Monsieur l’Abbe, if you had walked over the Palatine merely some fifty

years ago! I’ve seen some plans of that time. There were only some

vineyards and little gardens with hedges then, a real campagna, where not

a soul was to be met. And to think that all these palaces were sleeping

underneath!”

Pierre followed him, and after again passing the house of Augustus, they

ascended the slope and reached the vast Flavian palace,* still half

buried by the neighbouring villa, and composed of a great number of halls

large and small, on the nature of which scholars are still arguing. The

aula regia, or throne-room, the basilica, or hall of justice, the

triclinium, or dining-room, and the peristylium seem certainties; but for

all the rest, and especially the small chambers of the private part of

the structure, only more or less fanciful conjectures can be offered.

Moreover, not a wall is entire; merely foundations peep out of the

ground, mutilated bases describing the plan of the edifice. The only ruin

preserved, as if by miracle, is the house on a lower level which some

assert to have been that of Livia,* a house which seems very small beside

all the huge palaces, and where are three halls comparatively intact,

with mural paintings of mythological scenes, flowers, and fruits, still

wonderfully fresh. As for the palace of Tiberius, not one of its stones

can be seen; its remains lie buried beneath a lovely public garden;

whilst of the neighbouring palace of Caligula, overhanging the Forum,

there are only some huge substructures, akin to those of the house of

Severus--buttresses, lofty arcades, which upheld the palace, vast

basements, so to say, where the praetorians were posted and gorged

themselves with continual junketings. And thus this lofty plateau

dominating the city merely offered some scarcely recognisable vestiges to

the view, stretches of grey, bare soil turned up by the pick, and dotted

with fragments of old walls; and it needed a real effort of scholarly

imagination to conjure up the ancient imperial splendour which once had

triumphed there.

* Begun by Vespasian and finished by Domitian.--Trans.

** Others assert it to have been the house of Germanicus,

father of Caligula.--Trans.

Nevertheless Pierre’s guide, with quiet conviction, persisted in his

explanations, pointing to empty space as though the edifices still rose

before him. “Here,” said he, “we are in the Area Palatina. Yonder, you

see, is the facade of Domitian’s palace, and there you have that of

Caligula’s palace, while on turning round the temple of Jupiter Stator is

in front of you. The Sacred Way came up as far as here, and passed under

the Porta Mugonia, one of the three gates of primitive Rome.”

He paused and pointed to the northwest portion of the height. “You will

have noticed,” he resumed, “that the Caesars didn’t build yonder. And

that was evidently because they had to respect some very ancient

monuments dating from before the foundation of the city and greatly

venerated by the people. There stood the temple of Victory built by

Evander and his Arcadians, the Lupercal grotto which I showed you, and

the humble hut of Romulus constructed of reeds and clay. Oh! everything

has been found again, Monsieur l’Abbe; and, in spite of all that the

Germans say there isn’t the slightest doubt of it.”

Then, quite abruptly, like a man suddenly remembering the most

interesting thing of all, he exclaimed: “Ah! to wind up we’ll just go to

see the subterranean gallery where Caligula was murdered.”

Thereupon they descended into a long crypto-porticus, through the

breaches of which the sun now casts bright rays. Some ornaments of stucco

and fragments of mosaic-work are yet to be seen. Still the spot remains

mournful and desolate, well fitted for tragic horror. The old soldier’s

voice had become graver as he related how Caligula, on returning from the

Palatine games, had been minded to descend all alone into this gallery to

witness certain sacred dances which some youths from Asia were practising

there. And then it was that the gloom gave Cassius Chaereas, the chief of

the conspirators, an opportunity to deal him the first thrust in the

abdomen. Howling with pain, the emperor sought to flee; but the

assassins, his creatures, his dearest friends, rushed upon him, threw him

down, and dealt him blow after blow, whilst he, mad with rage and fright,

filled the dim, deaf gallery with the howling of a slaughtered beast.

When he had expired, silence fell once more, and the frightened murderers

fled.

The classical visit to the Palatine was now over, and when Pierre came up

into the light again, he wished to rid himself of his guide and remain

alone in the pleasant, dreamy garden on the summit of the height. For

three hours he had been tramping about with the guide’s voice buzzing in

his ears. The worthy man was now talking of his friendship for France and

relating the battle of Magenta in great detail. He smiled as he took the

piece of silver which Pierre offered him, and then started on the battle

of Solferino. Indeed, it seemed impossible to stop him, when fortunately

a lady came up to ask for some information. And, thereupon, he went off

with her. “Good-evening, Monsieur l’Abbe,” he said; “you can go down by

way of Caligula’s palace.”

Delightful was Pierre’s relief when he was at last able to rest for a

moment on one of the marble seats in the garden. There were but few

clumps of trees, cypresses, box-trees, palms, and some fine evergreen

oaks; but the latter, sheltering the seat, cast a dark shade of exquisite

freshness around. The charm of the spot was also largely due to its

dreamy solitude, to the low rustle which seemed to come from that ancient

soil saturated with resounding history. Here formerly had been the

pleasure grounds of the Villa Farnese which still exists though greatly

damaged, and the grace of the Renascence seems to linger here, its breath

passing caressingly through the shiny foliage of the old evergreen oaks.

You are, as it were, enveloped by the soul of the past, an ethereal

conglomeration of visions, and overhead is wafted the straying breath of

innumerable generations buried beneath the sod.

After a time, however, Pierre could no longer remain seated, so powerful

was the attraction of Rome, scattered all around that august summit. So

he rose and approached the balustrade of a terrace; and beneath him

appeared the Forum, and beyond it the Capitoline hill. To the eye the

latter now only presented a commingling of grey buildings, lacking both

grandeur and beauty. On the summit one saw the rear of the Palace of the

Senator, flat, with little windows, and surmounted by a high, square

campanile. The large, bare, rusty-looking walls hid the church of Santa

Maria in Ara Coeli and the spot where the temple of Capitoline Jove had

formerly stood, radiant in all its royalty. On the left, some ugly houses

rose terrace-wise upon the slope of Monte Caprino, where goats were

pastured in the middle ages; while the few fine trees in the grounds of

the Caffarelli palace, the present German embassy, set some greenery

above the ancient Tarpeian rock now scarcely to be found, lost, hidden as

it is, by buttress walls. Yet this was the Mount of the Capitol, the most

glorious of the seven hills, with its citadel and its temple, the temple

to which universal dominion was promised, the St. Peter’s of pagan Rome;

this indeed was the hill--steep on the side of the Forum, and a precipice

on that of the Campus Martius--where the thunder of Jupiter fell, where

in the dimmest of the far-off ages the Asylum of Romulus rose with its

sacred oaks, a spot of infinite savage mystery. Here, later, were

preserved the public documents of Roman grandeur inscribed on tablets of

brass; hither climbed the heroes of the triumphs; and here the emperors

became gods, erect in statues of marble. And nowadays the eye inquires

wonderingly how so much history and so much glory can have had for their

scene so small a space, such a rugged, jumbled pile of paltry buildings,

a mole-hill, looking no bigger, no loftier than a hamlet perched between

two valleys.

Then another surprise for Pierre was the Forum, starting from the Capitol

and stretching out below the Palatine: a narrow square, close pressed by

the neighbouring hills, a hollow where Rome in growing had been compelled

to rear edifice close to edifice till all stifled for lack of breathing

space. It was necessary to dig very deep--some fifty feet--to find the

venerable republican soil, and now all you see is a long, clean, livid

trench, cleared of ivy and bramble, where the fragments of paving, the

bases of columns, and the piles of foundations appear like bits of bone.

Level with the ground the Basilica Julia, entirely mapped out, looks like

an architect’s ground plan. On that side the arch of Septimius Severus

alone rears itself aloft, virtually intact, whilst of the temple of

Vespasian only a few isolated columns remain still standing, as if by

miracle, amidst the general downfall, soaring with a proud elegance, with

sovereign audacity of equilibrium, so slender and so gilded, into the

blue heavens. The column of Phocas is also erect; and you see some

portions of the Rostra fitted together out of fragments discovered near

by. But if the eye seeks a sensation of extraordinary vastness, it must

travel beyond the three columns of the temple of Castor and Pollux,

beyond the vestiges of the house of the Vestals, beyond the temple of

Faustina, in which the Christian Church of San Lorenzo has so composedly

installed itself, and even beyond the round temple of Romulus, to light

upon the Basilica of Constantine with its three colossal, gaping

archways. From the Palatine they look like porches built for a nation of

giants, so massive that a fallen fragment resembles some huge rock hurled

by a whirlwind from a mountain summit. And there, in that illustrious,

narrow, overflowing Forum the history of the greatest of nations held for

centuries, from the legendary time of the Sabine women, reconciling their

relatives and their ravishers, to that of the proclamation of public

liberty, so slowly wrung from the patricians by the plebeians. Was not

the Forum at once the market, the exchange, the tribunal, the open-air

hall of public meeting? The Gracchi there defended the cause of the

humble; Sylla there set up the lists of those whom he proscribed; Cicero

there spoke, and there, against the rostra, his bleeding head was hung.

Then, under the emperors, the old renown was dimmed, the centuries buried

the monuments and temples with such piles of dust that all that the

middle ages could do was to turn the spot into a cattle market! Respect

has come back once more, a respect which violates tombs, which is full of

feverish curiosity and science, which is dissatisfied with mere

hypotheses, which loses itself amidst this historical soil where

generations rise one above the other, and hesitates between the fifteen

or twenty restorations of the Forum that have been planned on paper, each

of them as plausible as the other. But to the mere passer-by, who is not

a professional scholar and has not recently re-perused the history of

Rome, the details have no significance. All he sees on this searched and

scoured spot is a city’s cemetery where old exhumed stones are whitening,

and whence rises the intense sadness that envelops dead nations. Pierre,

however, noting here and there fragments of the Sacred Way, now turning,

now running down, and now ascending with their pavement of silex indented

by the chariot-wheels, thought of the triumphs, of the ascent of the

triumpher, so sorely shaken as his chariot jolted over that rough

pavement of glory.

But the horizon expanded towards the southeast, and beyond the arches of

Titus and Constantine he perceived the Colosseum. Ah! that colossus, only

one-half or so of which has been destroyed by time as with the stroke of

a mighty scythe, it rises in its enormity and majesty like a stone

lace-work with hundreds of empty bays agape against the blue of heaven!

There is a world of halls, stairs, landings, and passages, a world where

one loses oneself amidst death-like silence and solitude. The furrowed

tiers of seats, eaten into by the atmosphere, are like shapeless steps

leading down into some old extinct crater, some natural circus excavated

by the force of the elements in indestructible rock. The hot suns of

eighteen hundred years have baked and scorched this ruin, which has

reverted to a state of nature, bare and golden-brown like a

mountain-side, since it has been stripped of its vegetation, the flora

which once made it like a virgin forest. And what an evocation when the

mind sets flesh and blood and life again on all that dead osseous

framework, fills the circus with the 90,000 spectators which it could

hold, marshals the games and the combats of the arena, gathers a whole

civilisation together, from the emperor and the dignitaries to the

surging plebeian sea, all aglow with the agitation and brilliancy of an

impassioned people, assembled under the ruddy reflection of the giant

purple velum. And then, yet further, on the horizon, were other cyclopean

ruins, the baths of Caracalla, standing there like relics of a race of

giants long since vanished from the world: halls extravagantly and

inexplicably spacious and lofty; vestibules large enough for an entire

population; a _frigidarium_ where five hundred people could swim

together; a _tepidarium_ and a _calidarium_* on the same proportions,

born of a wild craving for the huge; and then the terrific massiveness of

the structures, the thickness of the piles of brick-work, such as no

feudal castle ever knew; and, in addition, the general immensity which

makes passing visitors look like lost ants; such an extraordinary riot of

the great and the mighty that one wonders for what men, for what

multitudes, this monstrous edifice was reared. To-day, you would say a

mass of rocks in the rough, thrown from some height for building the

abode of Titans.

* Tepidarium, warm bath; calidarium, vapour bath.--Trans.

And as Pierre gazed, he became more and more immersed in the limitless

past which encompassed him. On all sides history rose up like a surging

sea. Those bluey plains on the north and west were ancient Etruria; those

jagged crests on the east were the Sabine Mountains; while southward, the

Alban Mountains and Latium spread out in the streaming gold of the

sunshine. Alba Longa was there, and so was Monte Cavo, with its crown of

old trees, and the convent which has taken the place of the ancient

temple of Jupiter. Then beyond the Forum, beyond the Capitol, the greater

part of Rome stretched out, whilst behind Pierre, on the margin of the

Tiber, was the Janiculum. And a voice seemed to come from the whole city,

a voice which told him of Rome’s eternal life, resplendent with past

greatness. He remembered just enough of what he had been taught at school

to realise where he was; he knew just what every one knows of Rome with

no pretension to scholarship, and it was more particularly his artistic

temperament which awoke within him and gathered warmth from the flame of

memory. The present had disappeared, and the ocean of the past was still

rising, buoying him up, carrying him away.

And then his mind involuntarily pictured a resurrection instinct with

life. The grey, dismal Palatine, razed like some accursed city, suddenly

became animated, peopled, crowned with palaces and temples. There had

been the cradle of the Eternal City, founded by Romulus on that summit

overlooking the Tiber. There assuredly the seven kings of its two and a

half centuries of monarchical rule had dwelt, enclosed within high,

strong walls, which had but three gateways. Then the five centuries of

republican sway spread out, the greatest, the most glorious of all the

centuries, those which brought the Italic peninsula and finally the known

world under Roman dominion. During those victorious years of social and

war-like struggle, Rome grew and peopled the seven hills, and the

Palatine became but a venerable cradle with legendary temples, and was

even gradually invaded by private residences. But at last Caesar, the

incarnation of the power of his race, after Gaul and after Pharsalia

triumphed in the name of the whole Roman people, having completed the

colossal task by which the five following centuries of imperialism were

to profit, with a pompous splendour and a rush of every appetite. And

then Augustus could ascend to power; glory had reached its climax;

millions of gold were waiting to be filched from the depths of the

provinces; and the imperial gala was to begin in the world’s capital,

before the eyes of the dazzled and subjected nations. Augustus had been

born on the Palatine, and after Actium had given him the empire, he set

his pride in reigning from the summit of that sacred mount, venerated by

the people. He bought up private houses and there built his palace with

luxurious splendour: an atrium upheld by four pilasters and eight

columns; a peristylium encompassed by fifty-six Ionic columns; private

apartments all around, and all in marble; a profusion of marble, brought

at great cost from foreign lands, and of the brightest hues, resplendent

like gems. And he lodged himself with the gods, building near his own

abode a large temple of Apollo and a shrine of Vesta in order to ensure

himself divine and eternal sovereignty. And then the seed of the imperial

palaces was sown; they were to spring up, grow and swarm, and cover the

entire mount.

Ah! the all-powerfulness of Augustus, his four and forty years of total,

absolute, superhuman power, such as no despot has known even in his

dreams! He had taken to himself every title, united every magistracy in

his person. Imperator and consul, he commanded the armies and exercised

executive power; pro-consul, he was supreme in the provinces; perpetual

censor and princeps, he reigned over the senate; tribune, he was the

master of the people. And, formerly called Octavius, he had caused

himself to be declared Augustus, sacred, god among men, having his

temples and his priests, worshipped in his lifetime like a divinity

deigning to visit the earth. And finally he had resolved to be supreme

pontiff, annexing religious to civil power, and thus by a stroke of

genius attaining to the most complete dominion to which man can climb. As

the supreme pontiff could not reside in a private house, he declared his

abode to be State property. As the supreme pontiff could not leave the

vicinity of the temple of Vesta, he built a temple to that goddess near

his own dwelling, leaving the guardianship of the ancient altar below the

Palatine to the Vestal virgins. He spared no effort, for he well realised

that human omnipotence, the mastery of mankind and the world, lay in that

reunion of sovereignty, in being both king and priest, emperor and pope.

All the sap of a mighty race, all the victories achieved, and all the

favours of fortune yet to be garnered, blossomed forth in Augustus, in a

unique splendour which was never again to shed such brilliant radiance.

He was really the master of the world, amidst the conquered and pacified

nations, encompassed by immortal glory in literature and in art. In him

would seem to have been satisfied the old intense ambition of his people,

the ambition which it had pursued through centuries of patient conquest,

to become the people-king. The blood of Rome, the blood of Augustus, at

last coruscated in the sunlight, in the purple of empire. And the blood

of Augustus, of the divine, triumphant, absolute sovereign of bodies and

souls, of the man in whom seven centuries of national pride had

culminated, was to descend through the ages, through an innumerable

posterity with a heritage of boundless pride and ambition. For it was

fatal: the blood of Augustus was bound to spring into life once more and

pulsate in the veins of all the successive masters of Rome, ever haunting

them with the dream of ruling the whole world. And later on, after the

decline and fall, when power had once more become divided between the

king and the priest, the popes--their hearts burning with the red,

devouring blood of their great forerunner--had no other passion, no other

policy, through the centuries, than that of attaining to civil dominion,

to the totality of human power.

But Augustus being dead, his palace having been closed and consecrated,

Pierre saw that of Tiberius spring up from the soil. It had stood where

his feet now rested, where the beautiful evergreen oaks sheltered him. He

pictured it with courts, porticoes, and halls, both substantial and

grand, despite the gloomy bent of the emperor who betook himself far from

Rome to live amongst informers and debauchees, with his heart and brain

poisoned by power to the point of crime and most extraordinary insanity.

Then the palace of Caligula followed, an enlargement of that of Tiberius,

with arcades set up to increase its extent, and a bridge thrown over the

Forum to the Capitol, in order that the prince might go thither at his

ease to converse with Jove, whose son he claimed to be. And sovereignty

also rendered this one ferocious--a madman with omnipotence to do as he

listed! Then, after Claudius, Nero, not finding the Palatine large

enough, seized upon the delightful gardens climbing the Esquiline in

order to set up his Golden House, a dream of sumptuous immensity which he

could not complete and the ruins of which disappeared in the troubles

following the death of this monster whom pride demented. Next, in

eighteen months, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius fell one upon the other, in

mire and in blood, the purple converting them also into imbeciles and

monsters, gorged like unclean beasts at the trough of imperial enjoyment.

And afterwards came the Flavians, at first a respite, with commonsense

and human kindness: Vespasian; next Titus, who built but little on the

Palatine; but then Domitian, in whom the sombre madness of omnipotence

burst forth anew amidst a _regime_ of fear and spying, idiotic atrocities

and crimes, debauchery contrary to nature, and building enterprises born

of insane vanity instinct with a desire to outvie the temples of the

gods. The palace of Domitian, parted by a lane from that of Tiberius,

arose colossal-like--a palace of fairyland. There was the hall of

audience, with its throne of gold, its sixteen columns of Phrygian and

Numidian marble and its eight niches containing colossal statues; there

were the hall of justice, the vast dining-room, the peristylium, the

sleeping apartments, where granite, porphyry, and alabaster overflowed,

carved and decorated by the most famous artists, and lavished on all

sides in order to dazzle the world. And finally, many years later, a last

palace was added to all the others--that of Septimius Severus: again a

building of pride, with arches supporting lofty halls, terraced storeys,

towers o’er-topping the roofs, a perfect Babylonian pile, rising up at

the extreme point of the mount in view of the Appian Way, so that the

emperor’s compatriots--those from the province of Africa, where he was

born--might, on reaching the horizon, marvel at his fortune and worship

him in his glory.

And now Pierre beheld all those palaces which he had conjured up around

him, resuscitated, resplendent in the full sunlight. They were as if

linked together, parted merely by the narrowest of passages. In order

that not an inch of that precious summit might be lost, they had sprouted

thickly like the monstrous florescence of strength, power, and unbridled

pride which satisfied itself at the cost of millions, bleeding the whole

world for the enjoyment of one man. And in truth there was but one palace

altogether, a palace enlarged as soon as one emperor died and was placed

among the deities, and another, shunning the consecrated pile where

possibly the shadow of death frightened him, experienced an imperious

need to build a house of his own and perpetuate in everlasting stone the

memory of his reign. All the emperors were seized with this building

craze; it was like a disease which the very throne seemed to carry from

one occupant to another with growing intensity, a consuming desire to

excel all predecessors by thicker and higher walls, by a more and more

wonderful profusion of marbles, columns, and statues. And among all these

princes there was the idea of a glorious survival, of leaving a testimony

of their greatness to dazzled and stupefied generations, of perpetuating

themselves by marvels which would not perish but for ever weigh heavily

upon the earth, when their own light ashes should long since have been

swept away by the winds. And thus the Palatine became but the venerable

base of a monstrous edifice, a thick vegetation of adjoining buildings,

each new pile being like a fresh eruption of feverish pride; while the

whole, now showing the snowy brightness of white marble and now the

glowing hues of coloured marble, ended by crowning Rome and the

world with the most extraordinary and most insolent abode of

sovereignty--whether palace, temple, basilica, or cathedral--that

omnipotence and dominion have ever reared under the heavens.

But death lurked beneath this excess of strength and glory. Seven hundred

and thirty years of monarchy and republic had sufficed to make Rome

great; and in five centuries of imperial sway the people-king was to be

devoured down to its last muscles. There was the immensity of the

territory, the more distant provinces gradually pillaged and exhausted;

there was the fisc consuming everything, digging the pit of fatal

bankruptcy; and there was the degeneration of the people, poisoned by the

scenes of the circus and the arena, fallen to the sloth and debauchery of

their masters, the Caesars, while mercenaries fought the foe and tilled

the soil. Already at the time of Constantine, Rome had a rival,

Byzantium; disruption followed with Honorius; and then some ten emperors

sufficed for decomposition to be complete, for the bones of the dying

prey to be picked clean, the end coming with Romulus Augustulus, the

sorry creature whose name is, so to say, a mockery of the whole glorious

history, a buffet for both the founder of Rome and the founder of the

empire.

The palaces, the colossal assemblage of walls, storeys, terraces, and

gaping roofs, still remained on the deserted Palatine; many ornaments and

statues, however, had already been removed to Byzantium. And the empire,

having become Christian, had afterwards closed the temples and

extinguished the fire of Vesta, whilst yet respecting the ancient

Palladium. But in the fifth century the barbarians rush upon Rome, sack

and burn it, and carry the spoils spared by the flames away in their

chariots. As long as the city was dependent on Byzantium a custodian of

the imperial palaces remained there watching over the Palatine. Then all

fades and crumbles in the night of the middle ages. It would really seem

that the popes then slowly took the place of the Caesars, succeeding them

both in their abandoned marble halls and their ever-subsisting passion

for domination. Some of them assuredly dwelt in the palace of Septimius

Severus; a council of the Church was held in the Septizonium; and, later

on, Gelasius II was elected in a neighbouring monastery on the sacred

mount. It was as if Augustus were again rising from the tomb, once more

master of the world, with a Sacred College of Cardinals resuscitating the

Roman Senate. In the twelfth century the Septizonium belonged to some

Benedictine monks, and was sold by them to the powerful Frangipani

family, who fortified it as they had already fortified the Colosseum and

the arches of Constantine and Titus, thus forming a vast fortress round

about the venerable cradle of the city. And the violent deeds of civil

war and the ravages of invasion swept by like whirlwinds, throwing down

the walls, razing the palaces and towers. And afterwards successive

generations invaded the ruins, installed themselves in them by right of

trover and conquest, turned them into cellars, store-places for forage,

and stables for mules. Kitchen gardens were formed, vines were planted on

the spots where fallen soil had covered the mosaics of the imperial

halls. All around nettles and brambles grew up, and ivy preyed on the

overturned porticoes, till there came a day when the colossal assemblage

of palaces and temples, which marble was to have rendered eternal, seemed

to dive beneath the dust, to disappear under the surging soil and

vegetation which impassive Nature threw over it. And then, in the hot

sunlight, among the wild flowerets, only big, buzzing flies remained,

whilst herds of goats strayed in freedom through the throne-room of

Domitian and the fallen sanctuary of Apollo.

A great shudder passed through Pierre. To think of so much strength,

pride, and grandeur, and such rapid ruin--a world for ever swept away! He

wondered how entire palaces, yet peopled by admirable statuary, could

thus have been gradually buried without any one thinking of protecting

them. It was no sudden catastrophe which had swallowed up those

masterpieces, subsequently to be disinterred with exclamations of

admiring wonder; they had been drowned, as it were--caught progressively

by the legs, the waist, and the neck, till at last the head had sunk

beneath the rising tide. And how could one explain that generations had

heedlessly witnessed such things without thought of putting forth a

helping hand? It would seem as if, at a given moment, a black curtain

were suddenly drawn across the world, as if mankind began afresh, with a

new and empty brain which needed moulding and furnishing. Rome had become

depopulated; men ceased to repair the ruins left by fire and sword; the

edifices which by their very immensity had become useless were utterly

neglected, allowed to crumble and fall. And then, too, the new religion

everywhere hunted down the old one, stole its temples, overturned its

gods. Earthly deposits probably completed the disaster--there were, it is

said, both earthquakes and inundations--and the soil was ever rising, the

alluvia of the young Christian world buried the ancient pagan society.

And after the pillaging of the temples, the theft of the bronze roofs and

marble columns, the climax came with the filching of the stones torn from

the Colosseum and the Theatre of Marcellus, with the pounding of the

statuary and sculpture-work, thrown into kilns to procure the lime needed

for the new monuments of Catholic Rome.

It was nearly one o’clock, and Pierre awoke as from a dream. The sun-rays

were streaming in a golden rain between the shiny leaves of the

ever-green oaks above him, and down below Rome lay dozing, overcome by

the great heat. Then he made up his mind to leave the garden, and went

stumbling over the rough pavement of the Clivus Victoriae, his mind still

haunted by blinding visions. To complete his day, he had resolved to

visit the old Appian Way during the afternoon, and, unwilling to return

to the Via Giulia, he lunched at a suburban tavern, in a large, dim room,

where, alone with the buzzing flies, he lingered for more than two hours,

awaiting the sinking of the sun.

Ah! that Appian Way, that ancient queen of the high roads, crossing the

Campagna in a long straight line with rows of proud tombs on either

hand--to Pierre it seemed like a triumphant prolongation of the Palatine.

He there found the same passion for splendour and domination, the same

craving to eternise the memory of Roman greatness in marble and daylight.

Oblivion was vanquished; the dead refused to rest, and remained for ever

erect among the living, on either side of that road which was traversed

by multitudes from the entire world. The deified images of those who were

now but dust still gazed on the passers-by with empty eyes; the

inscriptions still spoke, proclaiming names and titles. In former times

the rows of sepulchres must have extended without interruption along all

the straight, level miles between the tomb of Caecilia Metella and that

of Casale Rotondo, forming an elongated cemetery where the powerful and

wealthy competed as to who should leave the most colossal and lavishly

decorated mausoleum: such, indeed, was the craving for survival, the

passion for pompous immortality, the desire to deify death by lodging it

in temples; whereof the present-day monumental splendour of the Genoese

Campo Santo and the Roman Campo Verano is, so to say, a remote

inheritance. And what a vision it was to picture all the tremendous tombs

on the right and left of the glorious pavement which the legions trod on

their return from the conquest of the world! That tomb of Caecilia

Metella, with its bond-stones so huge, its walls so thick that the middle

ages transformed it into the battlemented keep of a fortress! And then

all the tombs which follow, the modern structures erected in order that

the marble fragments discovered might be set in place, the old blocks of

brick and concrete, despoiled of their sculptured-work and rising up like

seared rocks, yet still suggesting their original shapes as shrines,

_cippi_, and _sarcophagi_. There is a wondrous succession of high reliefs

figuring the dead in groups of three and five; statues in which the dead

live deified, erect; seats contrived in niches in order that wayfarers

may rest and bless the hospitality of the dead; laudatory epitaphs

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

early ages--accomplishing His various miracles.

“You see,” repeated the Trappist, “all those things are shown there; and

remember that none of the paintings was specially prepared: they are

absolutely authentic.”

At a question from Pierre, whose astonishment was increasing, he admitted

that the catacombs had been mere cemeteries at the outset, when no

religious ceremonies had been celebrated in them. It was only later, in

the fourth century, when the martyrs were honoured, that the crypts were

utilised for worship. And in the same way they only became places of

refuge during the persecutions, when the Christians had to conceal the

entrances to them. Previously they had remained freely and legally open.

This was indeed their true history: cemeteries four centuries old

becoming places of asylum, ravaged at times during the persecutions;

afterwards held in veneration till the eighth century; then despoiled of

their holy relics, and subsequently blocked up and forgotten, so that

they remained buried during more than seven hundred years, people

thinking of them so little that at the time of the first searches in the

fifteenth century they were considered an extraordinary discovery--an

intricate historical problem--one, moreover, which only our own age has

solved.

“Please stoop, mesdames,” resumed the Trappist. “In this compartment here

is a skeleton which has not been touched. It has been lying here for

sixteen or seventeen hundred years, and will show you how the bodies were

laid out. Savants say that it is the skeleton of a female, probably a

young girl. It was still quite perfect last spring; but the skull, as you

can see, is now split open. An American broke it with his walking stick

to make sure that it was genuine.”

The ladies leaned forward, and the flickering light illumined their pale

faces, expressive of mingled fright and compassion. Especially noticeable

was the pitiful, pain-fraught look which appeared on the countenance of

the daughter, so full of life with her red lips and large black eyes.

Then all relapsed into gloom, and the little candles were borne aloft and

went their way through the heavy darkness of the galleries. The visit

lasted another hour, for the Trappist did not spare a detail, fond as he

was of certain nooks and corners, and as zealous as if he desired to work

the redemption of his visitors.

While Pierre followed the others, a complete evolution took place within

him. As he looked about him, and formed a more and more complete idea of

his surroundings, his first stupefaction at finding the reality so

different from the embellished accounts of story-tellers and poets, his

disillusion at being plunged into such rudely excavated mole-burrows,

gave way to fraternal emotion. It was not that he thought of the fifteen

hundred martyrs whose sacred bones had rested there. But how humble,

resigned, yet full of hope had been those who had chosen such a place of

sepulchre! Those low, darksome galleries were but temporary

sleeping-places for the Christians. If they did not burn the bodies of

their dead, as the Pagans did, it was because, like the Jews, they

believed in the resurrection of the body; and it was that lovely idea of

sleep, of tranquil rest after a just life, whilst awaiting the celestial

reward, which imparted such intense peacefulness, such infinite charm, to

the black, subterranean city. Everything there spoke of calm and silent

night; everything there slumbered in rapturous quiescence, patient until

the far-off awakening. What could be more touching than those terra-cotta

tiles, those marble slabs, which bore not even a name--nothing but the

words _In Pace_--at peace. Ah! to be at peace--life’s work at last

accomplished; to sleep in peace, to hope in peace for the advent of

heaven! And the peacefulness seemed the more delightful as it was enjoyed

in such deep humility. Doubtless the diggers worked chance-wise and

clumsily; the craftsmen no longer knew how to engrave a name or carve a

palm or a dove. Art had vanished; but all the feebleness and ignorance

were instinct with the youth of a new humanity. Poor and lowly and meek

ones swarmed there, reposing beneath the soil, whilst up above the sun

continued its everlasting task. You found there charity and fraternity

and death; husband and wife often lying together with their offspring at

their feet; the great mass of the unknown submerging the personage, the

bishop, or the martyr; the most touching equality--that springing from

modesty--prevailing amidst all that dust, with compartments ever similar

and slabs destitute of ornament, so that rows and rows of the sleepers

mingled without distinctive sign. The inscriptions seldom ventured on a

word of praise, and then how prudent, how delicate it was: the men were

very worthy, very pious: the women very gentle, very beautiful, very

chaste. A perfume of infancy arose, unlimited human affection spread:

this was death as understood by the primitive Christians--death which hid

itself to await the resurrection, and dreamt no more of the empire of the

world!

And all at once before Pierre’s eyes arose a vision of the sumptuous

tombs of the Appian Way, displaying the domineering pride of a whole

civilisation in the sunlight--tombs of vast dimensions, with a profusion

of marbles, grandiloquent inscriptions, and masterpieces of

sculptured-work. Ah! what an extraordinary contrast between that pompous

avenue of death, conducting, like a highway of triumph, to the regal

Eternal City, when compared with the subterranean necropolis of the

Christians, that city of hidden death, so gentle, so beautiful, and so

chaste! Here only quiet slumber, desired and accepted night, resignation

and patience were to be found. Millions of human beings had here laid

themselves to rest in all humility, had slept for centuries, and would

still be sleeping here, lulled by the silence and the gloom, if the

living had not intruded on their desire to remain in oblivion so long as

the trumpets of the Judgment Day did not awaken them. Death had then

spoken of Life: nowhere had there been more intimate and touching life

than in these buried cities of the unknown, lowly dead. And a mighty

breath had formerly come from them--the breath of a new humanity destined

to renew the world. With the advent of meekness, contempt for the flesh,

terror and hatred of nature, relinquishment of terrestrial joys, and a

passion for death, which delivers and opens the portals of Paradise,

another world had begun. And the blood of Augustus, so proud of purpling

in the sunlight, so fired by the passion for sovereign dominion, seemed

for a moment to disappear, as if, indeed, the new world had sucked it up

in the depths of its gloomy sepulchres.

However, the Trappist insisted on showing the ladies the steps of

Diocletian, and began to tell them the legend. “Yes,” said he, “it was a

miracle. One day, under that emperor, some soldiers were pursuing several

Christians, who took refuge in these catacombs; and when the soldiers

followed them inside the steps suddenly gave way, and all the persecutors

were hurled to the bottom. The steps remain broken to this day. Come and

see them; they are close by.”

But the ladies were quite overcome, so affected by their prolonged

sojourn in the gloom and by the tales of death which the Trappist had

poured into their ears that they insisted on going up again. Moreover,

the candles were coming to an end. They were all dazzled when they found

themselves once more in the sunlight, outside the little hut where

articles of piety and souvenirs were sold. The girl bought a paper

weight, a piece of marble on which was engraved the fish symbolical of

“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour of Mankind.”

On the afternoon of that same day Pierre decided to visit St. Peter’s. He

had as yet only driven across the superb piazza with its obelisk and twin

fountains, encircled by Bernini’s colonnades, those four rows of columns

and pilasters which form a girdle of monumental majesty. At the far end

rises the basilica, its facade making it look smaller and heavier than it

really is, but its sovereign dome nevertheless filling the heavens.

Pebbled, deserted inclines stretched out, and steps followed steps, worn

and white, under the burning sun; but at last Pierre reached the door and

went in. It was three o’clock. Broad sheets of light streamed in through

the high square windows, and some ceremony--the vesper service, no

doubt--was beginning in the Capella Clementina on the left. Pierre,

however, heard nothing; he was simply struck by the immensity of the

edifice, as with raised eyes he slowly walked along. At the entrance came

the giant basins for holy water with their boy-angels as chubby as

Cupids; then the nave, vaulted and decorated with sunken coffers; then

the four cyclopean buttress-piers upholding the dome, and then again the

transepts and apsis, each as large as one of our churches. And the proud

pomp, the dazzling, crushing splendour of everything, also astonished

him: he marvelled at the cupola, looking like a planet, resplendent with

the gold and bright colours of its mosaic-work, at the sumptuous

_baldacchino_ of bronze, crowning the high altar raised above the very

tomb of St. Peter, and whence descend the double steps of the Confession,

illumined by seven and eighty lamps, which are always kept burning. And

finally he was lost in astonishment at the extraordinary profusion of

marble, both white and coloured. Oh! those polychromatic marbles,

Bernini’s luxurious passion! The splendid pavement reflecting the entire

edifice, the facings of the pilasters with their medallions of popes, the

tiara and the keys borne aloft by chubby angels, the walls covered with

emblems, particularly the dove of Innocent X, the niches with their

colossal statues uncouth in taste, the _loggie_ and their balconies, the

balustrade and double steps of the Confession, the rich altars and yet

richer tombs--all, nave, aisles, transepts, and apsis, were in marble,

resplendent with the wealth of marble; not a nook small as the palm of

one’s hand appearing but it showed the insolent opulence of marble. And

the basilica triumphed, beyond discussion, recognised and admired by

every one as the largest and most splendid church in the whole world--the

personification of hugeness and magnificence combined.

Pierre still wandered on, gazing, overcome, as yet not distinguishing

details. He paused for a moment before the bronze statue of St. Peter,

seated in a stiff, hierarchical attitude on a marble pedestal. A few of

the faithful were there kissing the large toe of the Saint’s right foot.

Some of them carefully wiped it before applying their lips; others, with

no thought of cleanliness, kissed it, pressed their foreheads to it, and

then kissed it again. Next, Pierre turned into the transept on the left,

where stand the confessionals. Priests are ever stationed there, ready to

confess penitents in every language. Others wait, holding long staves,

with which they lightly tap the heads of kneeling sinners, who thereby

obtain thirty days’ indulgence. However, there were few people present,

and inside the small wooden boxes the priests occupied their leisure time

in reading and writing, as if they were at home. Then Pierre again found

himself before the Confession, and gazed with interest at the eighty

lamps, scintillating like stars. The high altar, at which the Pope alone

can officiate, seemed wrapped in the haughty melancholy of solitude under

its gigantic, flowery _baldacchino_, the casting and gilding of which

cost two and twenty thousand pounds. But suddenly Pierre remembered the

ceremony in the Capella Clementina, and felt astonished, for he could

hear nothing of it. As he drew near a faint breath, like the far-away

piping of a flute, was wafted to him. Then the volume of sound slowly

increased, but it was only on reaching the chapel that he recognised an

organ peal. The sunlight here filtered through red curtains drawn before

the windows, and thus the chapel glowed like a furnace whilst resounding

with the grave music. But in that huge pile all became so slight, so

weak, that at sixty paces neither voice nor organ could be distinguished.

On entering the basilica Pierre had fancied that it was quite empty and

lifeless. There were, however, some people there, but so few and far

between that their presence was not noticed. A few tourists wandered

about wearily, guide-book in hand. In the grand nave a painter with his

easel was taking a view, as in a public gallery. Then a French seminary

went by, conducted by a prelate who named and explained the tombs. But in

all that space these fifty or a hundred people looked merely like a few

black ants who had lost themselves and were vainly seeking their way. And

Pierre pictured himself in some gigantic gala hall or tremendous

vestibule in an immeasurable palace of reception. The broad sheets of

sunlight streaming through the lofty square windows of plain white glass

illumined the church with blending radiance. There was not a single stool

or chair: nothing but the superb, bare pavement, such as you might find

in a museum, shining mirror-like under the dancing shower of sunrays. Nor

was there a single corner for solitary reflection, a nook of gloom and

mystery, where one might kneel and pray. In lieu thereof the sumptuous,

sovereign dazzlement of broad daylight prevailed upon every side. And, on

thus suddenly finding himself in this deserted opera-house, all aglow

with flaring gold and purple, Pierre could but remember the quivering

gloom of the Gothic cathedrals of France, where dim crowds sob and

supplicate amidst a forest of pillars. In presence of all this ceremonial

majesty--this huge, empty pomp, which was all Body--he recalled with a

pang the emaciate architecture and statuary of the middle ages, which

were all Soul. He vainly sought for some poor, kneeling woman, some

creature swayed by faith or suffering, yielding in a modest half-light to

thoughts of the unknown, and with closed lips holding communion with the

invisible. These he found not: there was but the weary wandering of the

tourists, and the bustle of the prelates conducting the young priests to

the obligatory stations; while the vesper service continued in the

left-hand chapel, nought of it reaching the ears of the visitors save,

perhaps, a confused vibration, as of the peal of a bell penetrating from

outside through the vaults above.

And Pierre then understood that this was the splendid skeleton of a

colossus whence life was departing. To fill it, to animate it with a

soul, all the gorgeous display of great religious ceremonies was needed;

the eighty thousand worshippers which it could hold, the great pontifical

pomps, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, the processions and

_corteges_ displaying all the luxury of the Church amidst operatic

scenery and appointments. And he tried to conjure up a picture of the

past magnificence--the basilica overflowing with an idolatrous multitude,

and the superhuman _cortege_ passing along whilst every head was lowered;

the cross and the sword opening the march, the cardinals going two by

two, like twin divinities, in their rochets of lace and their mantles and

robes of red moire, which train-bearers held up behind them; and at last,

with Jove-like pomp, the Pope, carried on a stage draped with red velvet,

seated in an arm-chair of red velvet and gold, and dressed in white

velvet, with cope of gold, stole of gold, and tiara of gold. The bearers

of the _Sedia gestatoria_* shone bravely in red tunics broidered with

gold. Above the one and only Sovereign Pontiff of the world the

_flabelli_ waved those huge fans of feathers which formerly were waved

before the idols of pagan Rome. And around the seat of triumph what a

dazzling, glorious court there was! The whole pontifical family, the

stream of assistant prelates, the patriarchs, the archbishops, and the

bishops, with vestments and mitres of gold, the _Camerieri segreti

partecipanti_ in violet silk, the _Camerieri partecipanti_ of the cape

and the sword in black velvet Renascence costumes, with ruffs and golden

chains, the whole innumerable ecclesiastical and laical suite, which not

even a hundred pages of the “Gerarchia” can completely enumerate, the

prothonotaries, the chaplains, the prelates of every class and degree,

without mentioning the military household, the gendarmes with their

busbies, the Palatine Guards in blue trousers and black tunics, the Swiss

Guards costumed in red, yellow, and black, with breastplates of silver,

suggesting the men at arms of some drama of the Romantic school, and the

Noble Guards, superb in their high boots, white pigskins, red tunics,

gold lace, epaulets, and helmets! However, since Rome had become the

capital of Italy the doors were no longer thrown wide open; on the rare

occasions when the Pope yet came down to officiate, to show himself as

the supreme representative of the Divinity on earth, the basilica was

filled with chosen ones. To enter it you needed a card of invitation. You

no longer saw the people--a throng of fifty, even eighty, thousand

Christians--flocking to the Church and swarming within it promiscuously;

there was but a select gathering, a congregation of friends convened as

for a private function. Even when, by dint of effort, thousands were

collected together there, they formed but a picked audience invited to

the performance of a monster concert.

* The chair and stage are known by that name.--Trans.

And as Pierre strolled among the bright, crude marbles in that cold if

gorgeous museum, the feeling grew upon him that he was in some pagan

temple raised to the deity of Light and Pomp. The larger temples of

ancient Rome were certainly similar piles, upheld by the same precious

columns, with walls covered with the same polychromatic marbles and

vaulted ceilings having the same gilded panels. And his feeling was

destined to become yet more acute after his visits to the other

basilicas, which could but reveal the truth to him. First one found the

Christian Church quietly, audaciously quartering itself in a pagan

church, as, for instance, San Lorenzo in Miranda installed in the temple

of Antoninus and Faustina, and retaining the latter’s rare porticus in

_cipollino_ marble and its handsome white marble entablature. Then there

was the Christian Church springing from the ruins of the destroyed pagan

edifice, as, for example, San Clemente, beneath which centuries of

contrary beliefs are stratified: a very ancient edifice of the time of

the kings or the republic, then another of the days of the empire

identified as a temple of Mithras, and next a basilica of the primitive

faith. Then, too, there was the Christian Church, typified by that of

Saint Agnes-beyond-the-walls which had been built on exactly the same

pattern as the Roman secular basilica--that Tribunal and Exchange which

accompanied every Forum. And, in particular, there was the Christian

Church erected with material stolen from the demolished pagan temples. To

this testified the sixteen superb columns of that same Saint Agnes,

columns of various marbles filched from various gods; the one and twenty

columns of Santa Maria in Trastevere, columns of all sorts of orders torn

from a temple of Isis and Serapis, who even now are represented on their

capitals; also the six and thirty white marble Ionic columns of Santa

Maria Maggiore derived from the temple of Juno Lucina; and the two and

twenty columns of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, these varying in substance,

size, and workmanship, and certain of them said to have been stolen from

Jove himself, from the famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus which rose

upon the sacred summit. In addition, the temples of the opulent Imperial

period seemed to resuscitate in our times at San Giovanni in Laterano and

San Paolo-fuori-le-mura. Was not that Basilica of San Giovanni--“the

Mother and Head of all the churches of the city and the earth”--like the

abode of honour of some pagan divinity whose splendid kingdom was of this

world? It boasted five naves, parted by four rows of columns; it was a

profusion of bas-reliefs, friezes, and entablatures, and its twelve

colossal statues of the Apostles looked like subordinate deities lining

the approach to the master of the gods! And did not San Paolo, lately

completed, its new marbles shimmering like mirrors, recall the abode of

the Olympian immortals, typical temple as it was with its majestic

colonnade, its flat, gilt-panelled ceiling, its marble pavement

incomparably beautiful both in substance and workmanship, its violet

columns with white bases and capitals, and its white entablature with

violet frieze: everywhere, indeed, you found, the mingling of those two

colours so divinely carnal in their harmony. And there, as at St.

Peter’s, not one patch of gloom, not one nook of mystery where one might

peer into the invisible, could be found! And, withal, St. Peter’s

remained the monster, the colossus, larger than the largest of all

others, an extravagant testimony of what the mad passion for the huge can

achieve when human pride, by dint of spending millions, dreams of lodging

the divinity in an over-vast, over-opulent palace of stone, where in

truth that pride itself, and not the divinity, triumphs!

And to think that after long centuries that gala colossus had been the

outcome of the fervour of primitive faith! You found there a blossoming

of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has

thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and

ruinous luxury. It would seem as if the absolute masters successively

ruling the city brought that passion for cyclopean building with them,

derived it from the soil in which they grew, for they transmitted it one

to the other, without a pause, from civilisation to civilisation, however

diverse and contrary their minds. It has all been, so to say, a

continuous blossoming of human vanity, a passionate desire to set one’s

name on an imperishable wall, and, after being master of the world, to

leave behind one an indestructible trace, a tangible proof of one’s

passing glory, an eternal edifice of bronze and marble fit to attest that

glory until the end of time. At the bottom the spirit of conquest, the

proud ambition to dominate the world, subsists; and when all has

crumbled, and a new society has sprung up from the ruins of its

predecessor, men have erred in imagining it to be cured of the sin of

pride, steeped in humility once more, for it has had the old blood in its

veins, and has yielded to the same insolent madness as its ancestors, a

prey to all the violence of its heredity directly it has become great and

strong. Among the illustrious popes there has not been one that did not

seek to build, did not revert to the traditions of the Caesars,

eternising their reigns in stone and raising temples for resting-places,

so as to rank among the gods. Ever the same passion for terrestrial

immortality has burst forth: it has been a battle as to who should leave

the highest, most substantial, most gorgeous monument; and so acute has

been the disease that those who, for lack of means and opportunity, have

been unable to build, and have been forced to content themselves with

repairing, have, nevertheless, desired to bequeath the memory of their

modest achievements to subsequent generations by commemorative marble

slabs engraved with pompous inscriptions! These slabs are to be seen on

every side: not a wall has ever been strengthened but some pope has

stamped it with his arms, not a ruin has been restored, not a palace

repaired, not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the

work with his Roman and pagan title of “Pontifex Maximus.” It is a

haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence

of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are

ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil

almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute

passion for domination and that desire for terrestrial glory which

wrought the triumph of Catholicism in scorn of the humble and pure, the

fraternal and simple ones of the primitive Church, one may well ask

whether Rome has ever been Christian at all!

And whilst Pierre was for the second time walking round the huge

basilica, admiring the tombs of the popes, truth, like a sudden

illumination, burst upon him and filled him with its glow. Ah! those

tombs! Yonder in the full sunlight, in the rosy Campagna, on either side

of the Appian Way--that triumphal approach to Rome, conducting the

stranger to the august Palatine with its crown of circling palaces--there

arose the gigantic tombs of the powerful and wealthy, tombs of

unparalleled artistic splendour, perpetuating in marble the pride and

pomp of a strong race that had mastered the world. Then, near at hand,

beneath the sod, in the shrouding night of wretched mole-holes, other

tombs were hidden--the tombs of the lowly, the poor, and the

suffering--tombs destitute of art or display, but whose very humility

proclaimed that a breath of affection and resignation had passed by, that

One had come preaching love and fraternity, the relinquishment of the

wealth of the earth for the everlasting joys of a future life, and

committing to the soil the good seed of His Gospel, sowing the new

humanity which was to transform the olden world. And, behold, from that

seed, buried in the soil for centuries, behold, from those humble,

unobtrusive tombs, where martyrs slept their last and gentle sleep whilst

waiting for the glorious call, yet other tombs had sprung, tombs as

gigantic and as pompous as the ancient, destroyed sepulchres of the

idolaters, tombs uprearing their marbles among a pagan-temple-like

splendour, proclaiming the same superhuman pride, the same mad passion

for universal sovereignty. At the time of the Renascence Rome became

pagan once more; the old imperial blood frothed up and swept Christianity

away with the greatest onslaught ever directed against it. Ah! those

tombs of the popes at St. Peter’s, with their impudent, insolent

glorification of the departed, their sumptuous, carnal hugeness, defying

death and setting immortality upon this earth. There are giant popes of

bronze, allegorical figures and angels of equivocal character wearing the

beauty of lovely girls, of passion-compelling women with the thighs and

the breasts of pagan goddesses! Paul III is seated on a high pedestal,

Justice and Prudence are almost prostrate at his feet. Urban VIII is

between Prudence and Religion, Innocent XI between Religion and Justice,

Innocent XII between Justice and Charity, Gregory XIII between Religion

and Strength. Attended by Prudence and Justice, Alexander VII appears

kneeling, with Charity and Truth before him, and a skeleton rises up

displaying an empty hour-glass. Clement XIII, also on his knees, triumphs

above a monumental sarcophagus, against which leans Religion bearing the

Cross; while the Genius of Death, his elbow resting on the right-hand

corner, has two huge, superb lions, emblems of omnipotence, beneath him.

Bronze bespeaks the eternity of the figures, white marble describes

opulent flesh, and coloured marble winds around in rich draperies,

deifying the monuments under the bright, golden glow of nave and aisles.

And Pierre passed from one tomb to the other on his way through the

magnificent, deserted, sunlit basilica. Yes, these tombs, so imperial in

their ostentation, were meet companions for those of the Appian Way.

Assuredly it was Rome, the soil of Rome, that soil where pride and

domination sprouted like the herbage of the fields that had transformed

the humble Christianity of primitive times, the religion of fraternity,

justice, and hope into what it now was: victorious Catholicism, allied to

the rich and powerful, a huge implement of government, prepared for the

conquest of every nation. The popes had awoke as Caesars. Remote heredity

had acted, the blood of Augustus had bubbled forth afresh, flowing

through their veins and firing their minds with immeasurable ambition. As

yet none but Augustus had held the empire of the world, had been both

emperor and pontiff, master of the body and the soul. And thence had come

the eternal dream of the popes in despair at only holding the spiritual

power, and obstinately refusing to yield in temporal matters, clinging

for ever to the ancient hope that their dream might at last be realised,

and the Vatican become another Palatine, whence they might reign with

absolute despotism over all the conquered nations.

VI.

PIERRE had been in Rome for a fortnight, and yet the affair of his book

was no nearer solution. He was still possessed by an ardent desire to see

the Pope, but could in no wise tell how to satisfy it, so frequent were

the delays and so greatly had he been frightened by Monsignor Nani’s

predictions of the dire consequences which might attend any imprudent

action. And so, foreseeing a prolonged sojourn, he at last betook himself

to the Vicariate in order that his “celebret” might be stamped, and

afterwards said his mass each morning at the Church of Santa Brigida,

where he received a kindly greeting from Abbe Pisoni, Benedetta’s former

confessor.

One Monday evening he resolved to repair early to Donna Serafina’s

customary reception in the hope of learning some news and expediting his

affairs. Perhaps Monsignor Nani would look in; perhaps he might be lucky

enough to come across some cardinal or domestic prelate willing to help

him. It was in vain that he had tried to extract any positive information

from Don Vigilio, for, after a short spell of affability and willingness,

Cardinal Pio’s secretary had relapsed into distrust and fear, and avoided

Pierre as if he were resolved not to meddle in a business which, all

considered, was decidedly suspicious and dangerous. Moreover, for a

couple of days past a violent attack of fever had compelled him to keep

his room.

Thus the only person to whom Pierre could turn for comfort was Victorine

Bosquet, the old Beauceronne servant who had been promoted to the rank of

housekeeper, and who still retained a French heart after thirty years’

residence in Rome. She often spoke to the young priest of Auneau, her

native place, as if she had left it only the previous day; but on that

particular Monday even she had lost her wonted gay vivacity, and when she

heard that he meant to go down in the evening to see the ladies she

wagged her head significantly. “Ah! you won’t find them very cheerful,”

said she. “My poor Benedetta is greatly worried. Her divorce suit is not

progressing at all well.”