reamt 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 excav