ated more than ten miles of
galleries, in which more than a million of their dead must have been laid
to rest. Now, there are dozens of catacombs; the environs of Rome are
honeycombed with them. Think of that, and perhaps you will be able to
form some idea of the vast number of people who were buried in this
manner."

Pierre listened, feeling greatly impressed. He had once visited a coal
pit in Belgium, and he here found the same narrow passages, the same
heavy, stifling atmosphere, the same nihility of darkness and silence.
The flamelets of the candles showed merely like stars in the deep gloom;
they shed no radiance around. And he at last understood the character of
this funereal, termite-like labour--these chance burrowings continued
according to requirements, without art, method, or symmetry. The rugged
soil was ever ascending and descending, the sides of the gallery snaked:
neither plumb-line nor square had been used. All this, indeed, had simply
been a work of charity and necessity, wrought by simple, willing
grave-diggers, illiterate craftsmen, with the clumsy handiwork of the
decline and fall. Proof thereof was furnished by the inscriptions and
emblems on the marble slabs. They reminded one of the childish drawings
which street urchins scrawl upon blank walls.

"You see," the Trappist continued, "most frequently there is merely a
name; and sometimes there is no name, but simply the words _In Pace_. At
other times there is an emblem, the dove of purity, the palm of
martyrdom, or else the fish whose name in Greek is composed of five
letters which, as initials, signify: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Saviour.'"

He again brought his candle near to the marble slabs, and the palm could
be distinguished: a central stroke, whence started a few oblique lines;
and then came the dove or the fish, roughly outlined, a zigzag indicating
a tail, two bars representing the bird's feet, while a round point
simulated an eye. And the letters of the short inscriptions were all
askew, of various sizes, often quite misshapen, as in the coarse
handwriting of the ignorant and simple.

However, they reached a crypt, a sort of little hall, where the graves of
several popes had been found; among others that of Sixtus II, a holy
martyr, in whose honour there was a superbly engraved metrical
inscription set up by Pope Damasus. Then, in another hall, a family vault
of much the same size, decorated at a later stage, with naive mural
painting