Valeria, the Martyr of the Catacombs: A Tale of Early Christian Life in Rome
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CHAPTER XXIX.
THE DOOM OF THE TRAITOR
But what, meantime, had become of the pursuers? Baffled in their effortto seize their prey, and fearful of losing their way in this tangledlabyrinth they had sullenly retreated, tracing their steps by thechalk-marks they had made upon the walls. At last, they returned to thestairway by which they had entered and so found their way above ground.
"This is no work for soldiers," muttered the disgusted officer, "huntingthese rats through their underground runs. They are a skulking set ofvermin."
"What has become of that coward Greek?" asked the second in command. "Hedidn't seem to half like the job."
"Is he not here? Then he must have made his escape," said the Centurion."But if he is caught in that rat-trap, there let him stay. I'll not riska Roman soldier's life to save a craven Greek," and he gave the commandto march back to the city.
Meanwhile, how fares it with the unhappy Isidorus?
When the soldiers caught sight of the Christians and began theirpursuit, he had no heart to join in it, and lingered in the vaultedchamber where the funeral rites had been interrupted. The first thingthat caught his eye was the epitaph of the noble Adauctus. Withquavering voice he read the lines we have already given: "Withunfaltering faith, despising the lord of the world, having confessedChrist, thou dids't seek the celestial realms."
"And this was he," he soliloquised, "who gave up name, and fame, andfortune, high office, and the favour of the Emperor, and embraced shame,and persecution, and a cruel death for conscience sake. How grand hewas that day when I warned him of the machinations of his foes--soundaunted and calm. But grander he is as he lies in the majesty of deathbehind that slab. I felt myself a coward in his living presence then,but in the presence of this dead map, I feel a greater coward still. Hismemory haunts, it tortures me, I must away!" and turning from, thechamber, he wandered by the dim light of his taper down the grave-linedcorridor, pausing at times to read their humble inscriptions:--
Rudely written, but each letter Full of hope, and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the here and the hereafter.
And their calmness and peacefulness seemed to reproach hisconscience-smitten and unrestful soul.
Listlessly he turned into another chamber, when, what was it that methis startled vision!--
VALERIA DORMIT IN PACE.
There slept in the sleep of death another victim of his perfidy, onewhom he had longed to save, one whose beauty had fascinated hisimagination, whose goodness had touched his heart. Overcome by hisemotion he flung himself on the ground, and bursting into convulsivesobs that shook his frame, he passionately kissed the cold stone slabon which was written the much-loved name.
"Would that I, too, slept the sleep of death," he exclaimed; "if I mightalso sleep in peace; if I might seek celestial realms.... So near andyet so far ... A great gulf fixed ... Never to see thee more ... in timenor in eternity."
Here the drip, drip of water which had infiltrated through the roof andfell upon the floor, jarred upon his excited nerves, and suddenly, witha hissing splash, fell a great drop on his taper and utterlyextinguished its light. For a moment, so intense and sudden was thedarkness, he was almost dazed; but instantly the greatness of his perilflashed upon his mind.
"Lost! Lost!" he frantically shrieked. "The outer darkness, the eternalwailing while she is in the light of life! Well I remember now the wordsof Primitius, in this very vault, as he spoke of the joys of heaven, thepains of hell;" and in the darkness he tried to trace with his fingerthe words, "DORMIT IN PACE"--"Sleeps in peace."
_"Vale! Vale! Eternum Vale!"_ he sobbed, as he kissed once more themarble slab, "an everlasting farewell! I must try to find theChristians, or the soldiers, or a way of escape from this prison-houseof graves."
He groped his way to the door of the vault and listened, oh! soeagerly--all the faculties of his body and mind seeming concentered inhis sense of hearing. But "the darkness gave no token and the silencewas unbroken." Nay, so awful was the stillness that brooded over thisvalley of death, that it seemed as if the motion of the earth on itsaxis must be audible, and the pulses of his temples were to his torturedear like the roaring of the distant sea.
Venturing forth, he groped his way from grave to grave, from vault tovault, from corridor to corridor, but no light, no sound, no hope! Everdenser seemed the darkness, ever deeper the silence, ever more appallingthe gloom. For hours he wandered on and on till, faint with hunger,parched with thirst, the throbbings, of his heart shaking his unnervedframe, he fell into a merciful swoon from which he never awoke.Centuries after, an explorer of this vast necropolis found crouching inthe corner of one of its chambers a fleshless skeleton, and on the tombabove he read the words, VALERIA DORMIT IN PACE. Was it accident orProvidence, or some strange instinct of locality that had brought thispoor blighted wreck to breathe his latest sigh at the tomb of one whomhe had so loved and so wronged?
The peasants of the Campagna tell to the present day of certain strangesounds heard at midnight from those hollow vaults--at times like thehooting of an owl, at times like the wailing of the wind, and at times,they whisper with bated breath, like the moaning of a soul in pain. Andthe guides to the Catacombs aver, that ever on the anniversary of themartyrdom of Valeria Callirho[e:], sighs and groans echo through the hollowvaults--the sighs and groans, tradition whispers, of a wretched apostatewho in the ages of persecution betrayed the early Christians to amartyr's doom.
ROMAN COLUMRARIUM
The Columbaria were the Pagan Roman underground sepulchres. In the manyniche-like dovecots--hence the name were placed the urns containing theashes of the dead whose bodies had been burned on the funeral pile.]