The Three Cities Trilogy: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

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.

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