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 Callirhoë, 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 assassin, 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 assemblies 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 bloody 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.

"They are at their incantations now," said the Centurion. "'Tis a fit place for their abominable orgies. Let us hasten, and we will spoil their wicked spells!" and he gave the command, at which the soldiers rushed forward toward the distant light.

Instantly it disappeared, and when they reached the spot naught was seen, save the tomb of Adauctus; and in the distant darkness was heard the sound of hurrying feet.

"The rats have fled," cried the officer; "after them, ferrets! Let not one escape!" and at the head of the maniple he darted down the echoing corridor.

But Hilarus guided his friends amid the darkness more swiftly than the soldiers could pursue by the light of their torches. He followed many a devious winding, especially contrived to frustrate capture, and facilitate escape. Threading a very narrow passage, he drew from a niche a wooden ladder, and placing it against the wall reached a stairway which began high up near the roof. The whole party followed, and Hilarus, drawing up the ladder after him, completely cut off pursuit. They soon reached the comparatively lofty vaults of a deserted _arenarium_, or sand pit, which communicated with the open air. As he stood with bared brow beneath the light of the silent stars, the good Presbyter Primitius devoutly exclaimed:--"_Anima nostra sicut passer erepta est de lagueo venantium_--Our soul is escaped as a bird out the snare of the fowler, the snare is broken and we are escaped."

The writer has not drawn upon his imagination in describing the arrangements for escape made by the persecuted Christians, when taking refuge in these dens and caves of the earth. In this very Catacomb of Callixtus, such a secret stairway still exists, and is illustrated by drawings in his book on this subject. The main entrance was completely obstructed and the stairway partially destroyed, so as to prevent ingress to the Catacomb, and a narrow stairway was constructed in the roof which could only be reached by a moveable ladder, connecting it with the floor. By drawing up this ladder pursuit could be easily cut off, and escape to a neighbouring _arenarium_ secured. Stores of corn, and oil, and wine have been found in these crypts, evidently as a provision in time of persecution; frequent wells also occur, amply sufficient for the supply of water; and the multitude of lamps which have been found would dispel the darkness, while their sudden extinction would prove the best concealment from attack by their enemies. Hence the Christians were stigmatized as a skulking, darkness-loving race,[55] who fled the light of day to burrow like moles in the earth. These labyrinths were admirably adapted for eluding pursuit. Familiar with their intricacies, and following a well-known clew, the Christian could plunge fearlessly into the darkness, where his pursuer would soon be inextricably lost.

Such hairbreadth escapes as we have described from the Roman soldiers, like sleuth hounds tracking their prey, must have been no uncommon events in those troublous times. But sometimes the Christians were surprised at their devotions, and their refuge became their sepulchre. Such was the tragic fate of Stephen, slain even while ministering at the altar; such the event described by Gregory of Tours, when a hecatomb of victims were immolated at once by heathen hate; such the peril which wrung from a stricken heart the cry, not of anger but of grief, recorded on a slab in the Catacombs: _Tempora infausta, quibus inter sacra et vota ne in cavernis quidem salvari possimus!_--"Oh! sad times in which, among sacred rites and prayers, even in caverns, we are not safe." It requires no great effort of imagination to conceive of the dangers and escapes which must have been frequent episodes in the heroic lives of the early soldiers of the cross.

With what emotions must the primitive believers, seeking refuge in these crypts, have held their solemn worship and heard the words of life, surrounded by the dead in Christ! With what power would come the promise of the resurrection of the body, amid the crumbling relics of mortality! How fervent their prayers for their companions in tribulation, when they themselves stood in jeopardy every hour! Their holy ambition was to witness a good confession even unto death. They burned to emulate the zeal of the martyrs of the faith, the plumeless heroes of a nobler chivalry than that of arms, the Christian athletes who won in the bloody conflicts of the arena, or amid the fiery tortures of the stake, not a crown of laurel or of bay, but a crown of life, starry and unwithering, that can never pass away. Their humble graves are grander monuments than the trophied tombs of Rome's proud conquerors upon the Appian Way. Reverently may we mention their names. Lightly may we tread beside their ashes.

Though the bodily presence of those conscripts of the tomb no longer walked among men, their intrepid spirit animated the heart of each member of that little community of persecuted Christians, "of whom the world was not worthy; who wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth, ... being destitute, afflicted, tormented."[56]

FOOTNOTES:

[55] Latebrosa et lucifugax natio. _Minuc. Felix._

[56] Compare the following spirited lines of Bernis:-- "La terre avail gemi sous le fer des tyrans; Elle cachait encore des martyrs expirans, Qui dans les noirs detours des grottes reculees Derobaient aux bourreaux leurs tetes mutilees." _Poeme de la Religion Vengee,_ chap. viii.