Valeria, the Martyr of the Catacombs Part 18

QVI VIXIT ANNOS XVIII. EN. V. DIES X.

"Valeria sleeps in peace. A sweet spirit guileless, wise, beautiful in Christ. She lived eighteen years, five months, ten days."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "VALERIA SLEEPS IN PEACE."]

Alas! the time never came when that costly memorial should be reared.

The violence of persecution soon drove the Empress herself an exile from her home, and when the storm rolled away there was none left to carry out her pious wish. Through the long centuries that humble epitaph was all the memorial of one of the n.o.blest, sweetest, bravest souls that ever lived. And even that rude slab was not destined always to cover her remains. After the re-discovery of the Catacombs in the sixteenth century, many of their tombs were pillaged for relics, or in the vain search for treasure. By some ruthless rifler of the grave this very slab was shivered, and the lower part of the epitaph destroyed; and there upon its rocky bed, on which it had reposed for well-nigh fifteen hundred years, lay in mouldering dust the remains of the maiden martyr, Valeria Callirhoe. Verily _Pulvis et umbra sumus_!

Primitius and Hilarus, with the little company of devout men who bore the martyrs to their burial, now proceeded to the entombment, in a neighbouring crypt, of the bodies of Adauctus and Aurelius. As they advanced through the dark corridors, but dimly lighted by their tapers'

feeble rays, the silence of that under-world seemed almost appalling.

Black shadows crouched around, and their footsteps echoed strangely down the distant pa.s.sages, dying gradually away in this vast valley of the shadow of death. Almost in silence their sacred task was completed, and they softly sang a funeral hymn before they turned to leave their martyred brethren to their last long sleep.

Suddenly there was heard the tumultuous "tramp, tramp," as of armed men.

Then the clang of iron mail and bronze cuira.s.s resounded through the vaulted corridors. The glare of torches was seen at the end of a long arched pa.s.sage, and the sharp, swift word of military command rang out stern and clear.

"Forward! Seize the caitiffs! Let not one escape! Slay if they resist!"

and a rush was made to the chamber where the notes of the Christian psalm had but now died away.

"Out with your lights!" exclaimed, in a m.u.f.fled tone, Hilarus, the fossor. "Follow me as closely and as quietly as you can. Good Father Primitius, your arm. By G.o.d's help we will disappoint those hunters of men of their antic.i.p.ated prey."

"Or join our brethren in martyrdom, as is His will," devoutly added Primitius. "He doeth all things well."

But we must go back a little to learn the cause and means of this armed invasion of the Catacombs.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[52] See Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, vii., 16 and 22. Eutychia.n.u.s, a Roman Christian, is recorded to have buried three hundred and forty-two martyrs with his own hands.

[53] See Chapter VI.

[54] Through the long lapse of ages this memorial has been preserved, and may still be read in Grater's great collection of ancient inscriptions. It is also referred to in Gibbon. In the epitaph occur the following fine lines:

INTEMERATA FIDE CONTEMPTO PRINCIPE MVNDI CONFESSVS XRM CAELESTIA REGNA PETISTI.

"With unfaltering faith, despising the lord of the world, having confessed Christ, thou dost seek the celestial realms."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE BETRAYAL--THE PURSUIT.

When the unhappy Isidorus discovered that through his cowardice and tergiversation, and through the confessions extorted from his distempered mind, a criminal charge had been trumped up against the fair Callirhoe, whose beauty and grace had touched his susceptible imagination, he was almost beside himself with rage and remorse. He protested to the Prefect Naso and his disreputable son, Calphurnius, that she was as innocent as an unweaned babe of the monstrous crime alleged against her--that of conspiracy to poison her beloved mistress.

"Accursed be the day," cried the wretched Isidorus, clenching his hands till his nails pierced the flesh, "accursed be the day when I first came to your horrid den to betray innocent blood. Would I had perished e'er it dawned."

"Hark you, my friend," said Naso, "do you remember by what means you promised to earn the good red gold with which I bought you?"

"Do not remind me of my shame in becoming a spy upon the Christians,"

cried the Greek with a look of self-loathing and abhorrence.

"Nay; 'by becoming one yourself,' that was the phrase as I wrote it on my tablets," sneered the prefect.

"Would that I could become one!" exclaimed the unhappy man.

"Suppose I take you at your word and believe you are one?" queried Naso with a malignant leer.

"What new wickedness is this you have in your mind?" asked the Greek.

"How would you like to share the doom of your friends, the old Jew and his pretty daughter, who are to be thrown to the lions to-day," went on the remorseless man, toying with his victim like a tiger with its prey.

"Gladly, were I but worthy," said the Greek. "Had I their holy hopes, I would rejoice to bear them company."

"But don't you see," said Naso, "a word of mine would send you to the arena, whether you like it or not? Your neck is in the noose, my handsome youth, and I do not think, with all your dexterity, you can wriggle out of it."

"Oh! any fate but that!" cried the Greek, writhing in anguish. "Let me die as a felon, a conspirator, an a.s.sa.s.sin, if you will; but not by the doom of the martyrs."

"Well, you see," went on the prefect, "justice is meted out to the Christians so much more swiftly and certainly than even against the worst of felons, that I am tempted to take this plan to secure you your deserts."

The craven-spirited Greek, to whom the very idea of death was torture, blanched with terror and stood speechless, his tongue literally cleaving to the roof of his mouth.

When the prefect perceived that he was sufficiently unnerved for his final experiment he unveiled his diabolical purpose.

"Hark you, my friend," he whispered or rather hissed into his ear, "you may do the State, yourself, and me a service, that will procure you life and liberty and fortune. You know the way to the secret a.s.semblies of the accursed Christian sect; lead hither a maniple of soldiers and your fortune's made."

"Tempter, begone!" exclaimed the Greek in a moment of virtuous indignation, "you would make me worse than Judas whom the Christians execrate as the betrayer of his Master whom they worship."

"As you please, my dainty youth," answered Naso, with his characteristic gesture of clutching his sword. "Prepare to feed the lions on the morrow," and he consigned him to a cell in the vaults of the Coliseum.

Very different was the night spent by this craven soul to that of the destined martyrs. The darkness, to his distempered imagination, seemed full of accusing eyes, which glared reproach and vengeance upon him. The hungry lions' roar smote his soul with fearful apprehensions. When the savage bounds of the wild beasts shook his cell he cowered upon the ground, the picture of abject misery and despair.

When by these mental tortures his nerves were all unstrung, the arch tempter silently entered his cell and whispered in his ear, "Well, my dainty Greek, are you ready for the games?"

"Save me! save me!" cried the unhappy man, "any death but that! I will do anything to escape such a fearful doom."

"I thought you would come to terms," replied the prefect, well skilled in the cruel arts of his office. "Life is sweet. Here is gold. By the service I require you shall earn liberty," and the compact was sealed whereby the Greek was to betray the subterranean hiding-places of the Christians to their enemies.

Hence it was that at the dead of night, a band of Roman soldiers, reckless ruffians trained to slaughter in many a b.l.o.o.d.y war, marched under cover of darkness along the Appian Way to the villa of the Lady Marcella. It was the work of a moment to force the door of the vineyard and they soon reached the entrance to the Catacomb.

"It is like a badger's burrow," said the officer in command. "We will soon bag our game, Here the old priest has his lair. Secure him at any cost. He is worth a score of the meaner vermin."

Lighting their torches they inarched on their devious way under the guidance of Isidorus, who had written on a rude chart the number of turns to be made to the right or left. With Roman military foresight, the officer marked with chalk the route they took, and fixed occasionally a torch in the niches in the wall.

Soon the soft, low cadence of the funeral hymn was heard, stealing weirdly on the ear, and a faint light glimmered from the chamber in which the Christians were paying the last rites to their martyred brethren.