assembled. In that brief period of peace, during which the church
emerged for awhile from her jealously-guarded subterranean life, the
rigour of an earlier rule of exclusion had been relaxed. And so it
came to pass that, on this morning Marius saw for the first time the
wonderful spectacle--wonderful, especially, in its evidential power
over himself, over his own thoughts--of those who believe.

There were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of
age, of personal type. The Roman ingenuus, with the white toga and
gold ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole
company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming
[131] thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united,
in a silence so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for
a moment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy.
Yet that could scarcely be, for the people here collected might have
figured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the
very face of which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the
variety of human type there present, was the various expression of
every form of human sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of
desire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks of
aged men and women of humble condition? Those young men, bent down so
discreetly on the details of their sacred service, had faced life and
were glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they had, to which
there had certainly been no parallel in the older world. Was some
credible message from beyond "the flaming rampart of the world"--a
message of hope, regarding the place of men's souls and their interest
in the sum of things--already moulding anew their very bodies, and
looks, and voices, now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and
kindling flame at work in them, which seemed to make everything else
Marius had ever known look comparatively vulgar and mean. There were
the children, above all--troops of children--reminding him of those
pathetic children's graves, like cradles or garden- [132] beds, he had
noticed in his first visit to these places; and they more than
satisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them, wondering
in what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into the
daylight, if awakened from sleep. Children of the Catacombs, some but
"a span long," with features not so much beautiful as heroic