to stop it. But who can stop _il diavolo e gli suoi angeli_?
Why, signor, if they want foxes, I myself, Beppo Donati, would catch
them any number for a paul or two. But they are all mad, all mad. And
the dogs, it is well known how they became possessed; for," lowering his
voice and coming nearer me, "I myself saw the arch-fiend himself and his
legions enter them bodily. I will tell the signor how it was.

"The signor has been in the Catacombs of the blessed martyrs, but
cannot know as much about them as myself, who was custodian for many a
year in the dangerous and least frequented ones; and it was there that I
received the hurt that caused me to turn model. Many are the hours I
have passed in the remote ones lying miles away from the Eternal City,
where the only available entrance was a tortuous, chimney-like hole
almost filled with rubbish, and so insignificant in appearance that it
had remained concealed by a few bushes from the time it was last used by
the blessed martyrs themselves till to-day.

"To descend this aperture, signor, one struggles along with much
difficulty: lying on one's chest, and with a lighted taper in one hand,
the other holding a rope that has been made fast to a tree outside, one
slides down by degrees feet foremost. The passages are usually narrowed
and choked by the rubbish, and descend nearly perpendicularly to where,
lower down, they open wider and your feet touch steps cut roughly in the
rock; but you must not trust them, for the soft stone will crumble with
your weight. After descending some sixty or seventy feet you suddenly
bump against an old stone doorway, and you are at the bottom. But on
passing the doorway your position is even worse, as the stagnant pools
of muddy water reach up to your knees, and the passages are too low to
admit of your standing upright, while you stretch your taper into a
thick darkness that closes over everything a few yards distant and
prevents your seeing anything but the horizontal niches in tiers, one
above the other, where the mortal remains of the beatific lie surrounded
by the symbols of the faith they died for. Here they keep their vigil
century after century over our Holy City, while they await their
glorious resurrection.

"I have been miles under the Campagna in these subterranean cemeteries.
No one has yet ascertained their entire extent. They branch out in every
direction, and the ramifications are so countless--not only on a level,
but in stori