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The rooms are incomparably smaller than those of the mediaeval palaces of the Roman nobles, and the decoration is sometimes crudely mixed of pagan and Christian themes and motives; the artists, like the painters of the Domatilla catacombs, were probably lingering in the old Greek tradition.

It is a prejudice that I dare to admit only when I am not on the platform, for the belief in the gentleman has become a kind of underground religion, like the worship in the Catacombs." Her eyes had grown wistful when she answered: "It is the price we pay for democracy." "The price we pay is the reign of social justice in theory, and in practice the rule of the Gideon Vetches of history.

In the very thickness of the walls of the basement were cells for penitents and recluses, long since abandoned, and rooms for the menials and slaves, of whom hundreds were employed in the precincts; under ground spread the mystical array of halls, grottoes, galleries and catacombs dedicated to the practice of the Mysteries and the initiation of neophytes; on the roof stood various observatories among them one erected for the study of the heavens by Eratosthenes, where Claudius Ptolemaeus had watched and worked.

Examine their palaces, their basins of porphyry, urns and vases of Numidian marble, catacombs, and subterranean cities; their sculptured heroes, triumphal arches, and amphitheatres in which a nation might assemble; their Corinthian columns hewn from the rocks of Egypt, and obelisks of granite transported by some strange but forgotten means from Alexandria; the simplicity the grandeur and beauty of their temples and churches; the vast fruitfulness of their lands, their rich vineyards, teeming fields, and early harvests; the mingled sublime and beautiful over the face of nature in this country, which is sheltered from invaders by mountains and seas, so as by a small degree of art to render it impregnable; their desolating earthquakes, which yet seem but to renovate fertility; their volcanos, sending forth volumes of flame and rivers of fire, and overwhelming cities which though they have buried they have not utterly destroyed; these and a thousand other particulars, which I can neither enumerate nor remember, apparently speak them a race the most favoured of heaven, and announce Italy to be a country for whose embellishment and renown earth and heaven, men and gods have for ages contended.

But in the mean time certain Greeks had tried to steal the holy body, so that the Roman Christians carried it away for nineteen months to the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian, after which they brought it back again and laid it in its place. And again after that, when the new circus was built by Elagabalus, they took it once more to the same catacombs, where it remained in safety for a long time.

Witness these gloomy labyrinths, fit home for the dead only, which nevertheless for years opened to shelter the living. Witness these names of martyrs, those words of despair. The walls carry down to later ages the words of grief, of lamentation, and of ever-changing feeling which were marked upon them during successive ages by those who were banished to these Catacombs.

As the day was passing far too rapidly and many points of special interest yet remained unseen, we turned with reluctance from the beauty and relief from the hardships of exploration in the Catacombs, and made our way over a crevice into Santa Claus' Pass, which was traversed for a considerable distance and then abandoned for a low crawl terminating at the Senate Chamber.

In times of persecution, the believers sought refuge in the catacombs. They assembled in the solitude of forests to pray and to exhort one another. When the Jews opposed themselves to the new creed, congregations met in the houses of the more wealthy.

I totally resist any idea of mannerism, dear friend Hawthorne, on your part, and as to the story growing on you, as you grow into it: well, I dare' say that has happened ere this: the best creations have come by chance: and if Hawthorne did not mean to excite an interest when he wanted merely to make a Roman idyl, why did we go into those Catacombs?

Yet these Catacombs of Domatilla are among the cheerfulest of all the catacombs, and a sense of something sweet and appealing invests them from the memory of the gentle lady whose piety consecrated them as the last home of the refugees and martyrs.