Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/98

108 niches—low openings, or stages in the walls, three stories high—and bones, chalk-like dust, lying everywhere. Here, no light, no atmosphere, admitted from without, but still an air as wonderfully good, warm and pure, as if it had been a tranquil sleeping-chamber, where it is good to rest. Here had a poor and persecuted people sought shelter for their dead, as well as for their preaching of the resurrection of the dead. Neither yet were the monuments of the earliest Christians here deficient in culture or art. Many fresco-paintings in the mausoleums, exhib i ted both these, and they far excelled, in style and artistic value, the Byzantine pictures in the catacombs of the fourth century.

At the end of our little chapel, was a well-preserved, humorous painting, representing a shepherd, who preaches to his flock. Some listen attentively, others wander away from him, others feed on the meadow; one ram bleats towards the preacher, with a horrible grimace. In the mean time, you see that a heavy shower of rain is falling. Another painting, also good and well-preserved, represents Moses, who, with his staff, opens the bosom of the rock, and the water gushes forth. Here you see the place where the altar has stood; you see the smoke on the walls, and the smoke of the lamp on the ceiling.

The symbols of the Holy Communion are represented in more than one of the chambers, as a glass with wine, above which is laid a fish, as also a plate, with the holy wafer. I approached my candle to the wine and the glass ; it shone as red and as fresh as if it had been painted yesterday, and not nearly two