_Poeme de la Religion Vengee,_ chap. viii.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE DOOM OF THE TRAITOR

But what, meantime, had become of the pursuers? Baffled in their effort
to seize their prey, and fearful of losing their way in this tangled
labyrinth they had sullenly retreated, tracing their steps by the
chalk-marks they had made upon the walls. At last, they returned to the
stairway by which they had entered and so found their way above ground.

"This is no work for soldiers," muttered the disgusted officer, "hunting
these rats through their underground runs. They are a skulking set of
vermin."

"What has become of that coward Greek?" asked the second in command. "He
didn'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 risk
a Roman soldier's life to save a craven Greek," and he gave the command
to march back to the city.

Meanwhile, how fares it with the unhappy Isidorus?

When the soldiers caught sight of the Christians and began their
pursuit, he had no heart to join in it, and lingered in the vaulted
chamber where the funeral rites had been interrupted. The first thing
that caught his eye was the epitaph of the noble Adauctus. With
quavering voice he read the lines we have already given: "With
unfaltering faith, despising the lord of the world, having confessed
Christ, thou dids't seek the celestial realms."

"And this was he," he soliloquised, "who gave up name, and fame, and
fortune, high office, and the favour of the Emperor, and embraced shame,
and persecution, and a cruel death for conscience sake. How grand he
was that day when I warned him of the machinations of his foes--so
undaunted and calm. But grander he is as he lies in the majesty of death
behind 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. His
memory haunts, it tortures me, I must away!" and turning from, the
chamber, he wandered by the dim light of his taper down the grave-lined
corridor, 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 his
conscience-smitten and unrestful soul.

Listlessly he turned into another chambe