Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz (best ereader under 100 .txt) 📗

Chapter XX

THEY went through the Vicus Patricius, along the Viminal to the former

Viminal gate, near the plain on which Diocletian afterward built

splendid baths. They passed the remains of the wall of Servius Tullius,

and through places more and more deserted they reached the Via

Nomentana; there, turning to the left, towards the Via Salaria, they

found themselves among hills full of sand-pits, and here and there they

found graveyards.

 

Meanwhile it had grown dark completely, and since the moon had not risen

yet, it would have been rather difficult for them to find the road were

it not that the Christians themselves indicated it, as Chilo foresaw.

 

In fact, on the right, on the left, and in front, dark forms were

evident, making their way carefully toward sandy hollows. Some of these

people carried lanterns,—covering them, however, as far as possible

with mantles; others, knowing the road better, went in the dark. The

trained military eye of Vinicius distinguished, by their movements,

younger men from old ones, who walked with canes, and from women,

wrapped carefully in long mantles. The highway police, and villagers

leaving the city, took those night wanderers, evidently, for laborers,

going to sand-pits; or grave-diggers, who at times celebrated ceremonies

of their own in the night-time. In proportion, however, as the young

patrician and his attendants pushed forward, more and more lanterns

gleamed, and the number of persons grew greater. Some of them sang

songs in low voices, which to Vinicius seemed filled with sadness. At

moments a separate word or a phrase of the song struck his ear, as, for

instance, “Awake, thou that sleepest,” or “Rise from the dead”; at

times, again, the name of Christ was repeated by men and women.

 

But Vinicius turned slight attention to the words, for it came to his

head that one of those dark forms might be Lygia. Some, passing near,

said, “Peace be with thee!” or “Glory be to Christ!” but disquiet seized

him, and his heart began to beat with more life, for it seemed to him

that he heard Lygia’s voice. Forms or movements like hers deceived him

in the darkness every moment, and only when he had corrected mistakes

made repeatedly did he begin to distrust his own eyes.

 

The way seemed long to him. He knew the neighborhood exactly, but could

not fix places in the darkness. Every moment they came to some narrow

passage, or piece of wall, or booths, which he did not remember as being

in the vicinity of the city. Finally the edge of the moon appeared from

behind a mass of clouds, and lighted the place better than dim lanterns.

Something from afar began at last to glimmer like a fire, or the flame

of a torch. Vinicius turned to Chilo.

 

“Is that Ostrianum?” asked he.

 

Chilo, on whom night, distance from the city, and those ghostlike forms

made a deep impression, replied in a voice somewhat uncertain,—“I know

not, lord; I have never been in Ostrianum. But they might praise God in

some spot nearer the city.”

 

After a while, feeling the need of conversation, and of strengthening

his courage, he added,—“They come together like murderers; still they

are not permitted to murder, unless that Lygian has deceived me

shamefully.”

 

Vinicius, who was thinking of Lygia, was astonished also by the caution

and mysteriousness with which her co-religionists assembled to hear

their highest priest; hence he said,—“Like all religions, this has its

adherents in the midst of us; but the Christians are a Jewish sect. Why

do they assemble here, when in the Trans-Tiber there are temples to

which the Jews take their offerings in daylight?”

 

“The Jews, lord, are their bitterest enemies. I have heard that, before

the present Cæsar’s time, it came to war, almost, between Jews and

Christians. Those outbreaks forced Claudius Cæsar to expell all the

Jews, but at present that edict is abolished. The Christians, however,

hide themselves from Jews, and from the populace, who, as is known to

thee, accuse them of crimes and hate them.”

 

They walked on some time in silence, till Chilo, whose fear increased as

he receded from the gates, said,—“When returning from the shop of

Euricius, I borrowed a wig from a barber, and have put two beans in my

nostrils. They must not recognize me; but if they do, they will not

kill me. They are not malignant! They are even very honest. I esteem

and love them.”

 

“Do not win them to thyself by premature praises,” retorted Vinicius.

 

They went now into a narrow depression, closed, as it were, by two

ditches on the side, over which an aqueduct was thrown in one place.

The moon came out from behind clouds, and at the end of the depression

they saw a wall, covered thickly with ivy, which looked silvery in the

moonlight. That was Ostrianum.

 

Vinicius’s heart began to beat now with more vigor. At the gate two

quarryrnen took the signs from them. In a moment Vinicius and his

attendants were in a rather spacious place enclosed on all sides by a

wall. Here and there were separate monuments, and in the centre was the

entrance to the hypogeum itself, or crypt. In the lower part of the

crypt, beneath the earth, were graves; before the entrance a fountain

was playing. But it was evident that no very large number of persons

could find room in the hypogeum; hence Vinicius divined without

difficulty that the ceremony would take place outside, in the space

where a very numerous throng was soon gathered.

 

As far as the eye could reach, lantern gleamed near lantern, but many of

those who came had no light whatever. With the exception of a few

uncovered heads, all were hooded, from fear of treason or the cold; and

the young patrician thought with alarm that, should they remain thus, he

would not be able to recognize Lygia in that crowd and in the dim light.

 

But all at once, near the crypt, some pitch torches were ignited and put

into a little pile. There was more light. After a while the crowd

began to sing a certain strange hymn, at first in a low voice, and then

louder. Vinicius had never heard such a hymn before. The same yearning

which had struck him in the hymns murmured by separate persons on the

way to the cemetery, was heard now in that, but with far more

distinctness and power; and at last it became as penetrating and immense

as if together with the people, the whole cemetery, the hills, the pits,

and the region about, had begun to yearn. It might seem, also, that

there was in it a certain calling in the night, a certain humble prayer

for rescue in wandering and darkness.

 

Eyes turned upward seemed to see some one far above, there on high, and

outstretched hands seemed to implore him to descend. When the hymn

ceased, there followed a moment as it were of suspense,—so impressive

that Vinicius and his companions looked unwittingly toward the stars, as

if in dread that something uncommon would happen, and that some one

would really descend to them.

 

Vinicius had seen a multitude of temples of most various structure in

Asia Minor, in Egypt, and in Rome itself; he had become acquainted with

a multitude of religions, most varied in character, and had heard many

hymns; but here, for the first time, he saw people calling on a divinity

with hymns,—not to carry out a fixed ritual, but calling from the

bottom of the heart, with the genuine yearning which children might feel

for a father or a mother. One had to be blind not to see that those

people not merely honored their God, but loved him with the whole soul.

Vinicius had not seen the like, so far, in any land, during any

ceremony, in any sanctuary; for in Rome and in Greece those who still

rendered honor to the gods did so to gain aid for themselves or through

fear; but it had not even entered any one’s head to love those

divinities.

 

Though his mind was occupied with Lygia, and his attention with seeking

her in the crowd, he could not avoid seeing those uncommon and wonderful

things which were happening around him. Meanwhile a few more torches

were thrown on the fire, which filled the cemetery with ruddy light and

darkened the gleam of the lanterns. That moment an old man, wearing a

hooded mantle but with a bare head, issued from the hypogeum. This man

mounted a stone which lay near the fire.

 

The crowd swayed before him. Voices near Vinicius whispered, “Peter!

Peter!” Some knelt, others extended their hands toward him. There

followed a silence so deep that one heard every charred particle that

dropped from the torches, the distant rattle of wheels on the Via

Nomentana, and the sound of wind through the few pines which grew close

to the cemetery.

 

Chilo bent toward Vinicius and whispered,—“This is he! The foremost

disciple of Christ-a fisherman!”

 

The old man raised his hand, and with the sign of the cross blessed

those present, who fell on their knees simultaneously. Vinicius and his

attendants, not wishing to betray themselves, followed the example of

others. The young man could not seize his impressions immediately, for

it seemed to him that the form which he saw there before him was both

simple and uncommon, and, what was more, the uncommonness flowed just

from the simplicity. The old man had no mitre on his head, no garland

of oak-leaves on his temples, no palm in his hand, no golden tablet on

his breast, he wore no white robe embroidered with stars; in a word, he

bore no insignia of the kind worn by priests—Oriental, Egyptian, or

Greek—or by Roman flamens. And Vinicius was struck by that same

difference again which he felt when listening to the Christian hymns;

for that “fisherman,” too, seemed to him, not like some high priest

skilled in ceremonial, but as it were a witness, simple, aged, and

immensely venerable, who had journeyed from afar to relate a truth which

he had seen, which he had touched, which he believed as he believed in

existence, and he had come to love this truth precisely because he

believed it. There was in his face, therefore, such a power of

convincing as truth itself has. And Vinicius, who had been a sceptic,

who did not wish to yield to the charm of the old man, yielded, however,

to a certain feverish curiosity to know what would flow from the lips of

that companion of the mysterious “Christus,” and what that teaching was

of which Lygia and Pomponia Græcina were followers.

 

Meanwhile Peter began to speak, and he spoke from the beginning like a

father instructing his children and teaching them how to live. He

enjoined on them to renounce excess and luxury, to love poverty, purity

of life, and truth, to endure wrongs and persecutions patiently, to obey

the government and those placed above them, to guard against treason,

deceit, and calumny; finally, to give an example in their own society to

each other, and even to pagans.

 

Vinicius, for whom good was only that which could bring back to him

Lygia, and evil everything which stood as a barrier between them, was

touched and angered by certain of those counsels. It seemed to him that

by enjoining purity and a struggle with desires the old man dared, not

only to condemn his love, but to rouse Lygia against him and confirm her

in