JUST outside of the Ostian Gate is the pyramid of Caius Cestius—Tribune, PrÆtor and Priest, who died thirty years before Christ was born, and left a fortune to be expended in glorification of himself and deeds. The monument is one hundred and twenty feet high, nearly one hundred feet square at the base, built of brick and overlaid with marble slabs. Modeled after the Egyptian mausoleums, and unaccountably spared by Goth and Pope, it stands to-day, after the more merciful wear and tear of twenty centuries, entire, and virtually unharmed. Alexander VII., when he had the rubbish cleared away from the base, also ordered a door to be cut in the side. The body, or ashes of Cestius had been deposited in the centre of the pyramid before its completion, and hermetically inclosed by the stupendous walls. What was done with the handful of dust that had been august and a member of the College of Epulones, appointed to minister by sacrifices to the gods, history does not relate. The great pile contains one empty chamber contemptible in dimensions by comparison with the superficies of the exterior. The walls of this retain signs of frescoes, designed for the delectation of the dead noble, and such ghostly visitants as were able to penetrate the marble facing and twenty feet of brick laid with Roman cement. The custodian of the English burial-ground has the key of Alexander’s door, and shows the vault for a consideration. Nobody goes to see it a second time.

The Ostian Gate is now the Porta S. Paolo, and is a modern structure. Here begins the Via Ostiensis, in St. Paul’s life-time, the thronged road to Rome’s renowned sea-port. Ostia is now a wretched fishing-village of less than one hundred inhabitants. Over the intervening country broods malaria, winter and summer. Conybeare and Howson have told us in words that read like the narrative of an eye-witness, how the route looked when, “through the dust and tumult of that busy throng, the small troop of soldiers”—having Paul in charge—“threaded their way under the bright sky of an Italian midsummer.”

The silence and desolation of the Campagna on the February day of our excursion to Tre Fontane, or Aquas Salvias,—the Tyburn of the Romans under the Emperors, were as depressing as the seen shadow of Death. The sunlight brought out warm umber tints upon the gray sides of the pyramid. Children, ragged and happy, rolled in the dust and basked in the sun before the mean houses on the wayside. Women in short, russet skirts, blue or red bodices, with gay handkerchiefs, folded square, laid upon the top of the head and hanging down the back of the neck, nursed brown babies and spun flax in open doors, or sitting flat upon the ground. Men drank and smoked in and about the wine-shops, talking with such vehemence of gesticulation as would frighten those who did not know that the subject of debate was no more important than the price of macaroni, or the effect of yesterday’s rain upon the growing artichokes.

But, from the moment our short procession of three carriages emerged from the city-gate and took the road to Ostia, the most mercurial spirit amongst us felt the weight as of a remembered sorrow. We had seen the opening in the floor of the lower chapel of S. Pietro in Montorio, where S. Peter’s cross had stood, and the golden sand in which the foot of it was imbedded; groped down the steps of the Mamertine Prison, and felt our way by torchlight around the confines of the cell in which both of the Great Apostles, it is said, perhaps truly, were incarcerated up to the day of their martyrdom. We had surveyed the magnificence, without parallel even in Rome, of the Basilica of St Paul’s Without the Walls; the very sepulchre of St Paul, the ostensible reason for this affluence of ecclesiastical grandeur, and believed exactly as much and as little as we pleased of what the Church told us of localities, and authorities in support of the authenticity of these. But the evidence that St. Paul was beheaded near Rome, in Via Ostiensis, was irrefragable. There was no ground for cavil in the statement, sustained by venerable traditions, that he perished at Tre Fontane.

Half-way between the Gate of St. Paul and the Basilica, is a squalid chapel, the entrance rather lower than the street, with an indifferent bas-relief over the door, of two men locked in one another’s arms. Here—according to the apocryphal epistle of St. Dionysius the Areopagite to Timothy—Peter and Paul, who, Jerome states, were executed upon the same day, parted. Besides the bas-relief, the tablet over the lintel records their farewell words:

“And Paul said unto Peter,—‘Peace be with thee, Foundation of the Church, Shepherd of the Flock of Christ!’”

“And Peter said unto Paul,—‘Go in peace, Preacher of Good Tidings, and Guide of the Salvation of the Just!’”

We were in no mood to make this one of the stations of our pious journey. Nor did we stop at the Basilica, the dingy outside of which offers no promise of the superb interior. Beyond the church spread the sad-colored Campagna, irresponsive to the sunshine, unbroken save by leafless coppices and undulations where the surface rolled into hillocks that caught no light, and into hollows of deeper gloom. A few peasants’ huts upon the edge of a common, and mounds of shapeless ruins, are all the signs of human habitation, past or present. It is unutterably mournful—this “wilderness that moans at the gates” of the seven-hilled city. The sun was oppressive in the unshaded road, although the sky was filmy, and the horses moved sluggishly. Ours was a funeral cortÉge, following the figure loving fancies set before us in the lonely highway. An old man, enfeebled by imprisonment, by “weariness and painfulness, by watchings often, by hunger and thirst, by fastings often, by cold and nakedness,” yet pressing forward, ready and joyful to be offered. We had read, last night, in anticipation of this pilgrimage, his farewell letter to his adopted son; noted, as we had not in previous perusals, his confident expectation of this event; and the yearning of the great, tender heart over this dearest of earthly friends,—his desire to see him once more before his departure breaking in upon his clearest views of Heaven and the Risen Lord. It was the backward glance of a father from the top of the hill that will hide the group of watching children from his eyes.

“Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord—the righteous Judge—shall give me at that day.”

(This was after he had been brought before Nero the first time, where—“no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.”)

“And not unto me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.

“Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me!”

And, again:—“The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom. To whom be glory forever and ever! Amen!

“Do thy diligence to come to me before winter!”

He had not thought his end so near, then. The likelihood is that he was hurried to the judgment the second time, and sentence speedily pronounced. He may have been still bewildered by this haste when he walked with his escort, along the road to Ostia. It was June, and the sun beat fiercely upon his head. After the cool twilight of the dungeon, the air must have scorched like furnace-vapors. He would be very weary before the three miles beyond the gates were accomplished, unless the rapturous certainty that he would, that very day, stand face-to-face with Him who also suffered without the gate, lightened the burden of heavy limbs and fainting flesh.

A high wall, rising abruptly from barren fields, incloses three churches, a small monastery, a flower and kitchen-garden, and some rows of thrifty Eucalyptus trees. Thus much we saw, through the grating of the gate, while awaiting the answer to our ring. A monk admitted us. The Convent was made over to the Order of La Trappe in 1868. Twelve brethren, by the help of Eucalyptus and the saints, live here, defying isolation and malaria. Their rules are strict, enjoining many fastings and prayers. They wear sandals instead of shoes, and have, therefore, the shuffling gait inseparably connected, in our minds, with pietistic pretension. A man in loose slippers recalls the impression to this day. The habit of the order is brown cloth, and is worn day and night, without change, for three years, when it is laid aside—or drops off of its own weight and threadbareness—for a new one. Our monk had donned his—we estimated, charitably—just two years and eleven months anterior to our acquaintance with him, and eaten onions three times every day. He was a social brother, alert and garrulous, and shortly grew more gallant to the young ladies of our party than became his asceticism and his paucity of front teeth. He stared open-mouthed—consequently, disagreeably—at our refusal to enter the church nearest the gate.

“It is the church of Santa Maria Scala Coeli!” he represented, earnestly. “Twelve thousand Christian martyrs, who built the ThermÆ of Diocletian, slumber beneath it. Holy St. Bernard had here a dream of angels carrying souls up a ladder from purgatory to heaven.”

“Very interesting!” we acknowledged, suavely. “But our time is short!”

The brother regretted. “But messieurs and mesdames will not pass the second door! The church of Saints Vincenzo and Anastasia. Very antique, founded in 625. One sees there, still, frescoes celebrating the deaths of these holy men, by cooking upon a gridiron and by strangling. Mesdemoiselles will enjoy looking upon these.”

Unmoved by his tempting lures, we passed on to the third, last, and evidently, in his opinion, the least attractive of the three edifices—San Paolo alle tre Fontane. He followed, discontented, but always obsequious.

The vestibule walls are adorned with bas-reliefs of St. Paul’s execution in the presence of Roman guards. The pavement of the church is a large and fine mosaic, found in the ruins of ancient Ostia. The subject is the Four Seasons, and the monk, checking us when we would have trodden upon it, threw himself into a studied transport of admiration. There was not another mosaic like it in Italy. Contemplate the brilliant dyes! the graceful contour of the figures! Artists from all lands flocked to the Abbey delle tre Fontane, entreating permission from the Superior to copy it.

We broke the thread impatiently from the reel. We were here to see where St. Paul was beheaded.

“Vraiment?” politely, smothering his chagrin. “But, certainly! Upon that block in the corner!”

It was a pillar, not a block, and marble, not wooden. An imposition so bare-faced did not pass unchallenged. We argued that the pillar was modern in workmanship, and too clean. No blood-stains disfigured its whiteness.

“There had been blood-stains without doubt. Beyond question, also, the kisses and tears of the faithful had erased them.”

But it was absurd, unheard of, to talk of decapitation upon a stone block, waiving objections to the height and shape of this. The axe, in severing the head, would be spoiled utterly by contact with the hard surface beneath.

“So I should have said, Monsieur. It is the dictate of le bon sens, Madame! But me—I am here to repeat what the Church instructs me to say. When I arrive at this so holy place, I find the pillar here, as you see it—protected by an iron rail from destruction at the hands and lips of devotees. I am told, ‘It is the pillar on which was cut off the head of St. Paul the Blessed Martyr.’ Who am I, a poor lay-brother, that I should doubt the decree of the Church?”

Seeing absolution in our faces after this frank confession, he entered, with interest, upon the history of the three fountains enclosed in as many marble altars, ranged at one side of the church. In the front of each is an opening large enough to admit the hand, arm, and a drinking-cup kept ready for dipping. Above each aperture is a head of Paul in bas-relief. In the first, the eyes are open, the features instinct with life. The second portrays the relaxed lineaments of a dying man, the third, the rigidity of death in closed eyelids and sunken cheeks. Keeping close to the letter of the lesson he had been taught, our unsavory cicerone related that the Apostle’s head made three bounds upon the earth after its separation from the body, and that at each touch a fountain had burst forth. To establish the truth of the miracle to unbelievers in all ages, no less than to kindle the enthusiasm of true worshippers at this shrine, the water of the first spring is still warm; of the second, tepid; of the third, ice-cold.

“Will Mademoiselle,” turning to the young girl near him, and grimacing in what was meant to be a fascinating fashion—“Will Mademoiselle vouchsafe to taste the healing waters? For that they are a veritable catholicon is attested by many cures. Or, is it that Mademoiselle is never ill? Her blooming cheeks would say, ‘No.’ Ah, then, so much the better! A draught of the miraculous fountains—accompanied, of course, by an ‘Ave Maria,’ is efficacious in procuring a husband. May he be un bon Catholique!”

But one of the company tasted the waters, and she affirmed roundly—in English, for our benefit, in French for the friar’s—that the temperature of all three was the same.

“That is because you have not faith!” chuckled the lay-brother, throwing what was left in the cup upon the Four Seasons. “The Catholic husband will cure all that!”

His cackling laugh was odious, his torrent of talk wearisome. We hurried to escape them by quitting the church and proffering the gate-fee, a franc for each person. At sight of the money, he ceased laughing and began to whine. The fees were the property of the Convent. For himself, he had no perquisites save such as he earned from the sale of Eucalyptus syrup. Unlocking the door of a store-house, he showed us shelves crowded with bottles of the elixir, prepared by the brethren, and used freely by them in the sickly season. Formerly, we were informed, no one could live here even in winter. The place was a miasmatic swamp, the churches and abbey were almost in ruins. But the monks of La Trappe enjoyed in an extraordinary degree (the whine rising into a sanctimonious sing-song) the favor of Our Lady and the saints. They stayed here, the year around, encouraged by His Holiness the Pope in the cultivation of the Eucalyptus, chiefly, that the elixir might be bestowed upon the contadini who ventured to live in the pestilential district, and charitable forestieri, (foreigners) unused to the climate. We assured him, coldly, that we would not buy medicine we did not need, and satisfied his benevolent intentions us-ward, by paying him for some flowers and pieces of marble we brought away as souvenirs. We left him standing in the gateway, grinning at the young ladies, and breathing so hard that we imagined we smelt garlic and sour wine a hundred yards down the road.

“A filthy cur!” uttered Caput, and nobody said him nay.

Even the demon of malaria might scorn such prey.

We were told by those qualified by long residence in Italy to speak advisedly concerning these matters, that, while the priesthood of that country comprises many men eminent for learning, the mass of minor ecclesiastics, especially in the country, are ignorant and vulgar beyond our powers of credence. For ages, the monastic orders have been a swarm of caterpillars, battening upon the fat of the land, and blighting, while they devoured. To the King, who let the light into their nests, clearing out many, and leaving in the nest only those who were too infirm to begin a work, so unfamiliar to them all, as earning their livelihood—the thanks of civilization and philanthropy are due.

So harshly had our experiences in the church jarred upon the mood in which we had approached it, that we could not, as it were, get back to St. Paul that day. We deferred the pilgrimage to his supposed tomb until we were in better tune.

Tradition—“the elder sister of history”—asserts that as devout men carried Stephen to his burial, Paul’s friends and converts, including persons of influence in the city, even some attachÉs of the Imperial household, took charge of his remains. It is interesting to note the names of certain disciples, who were, we know, of that faithful band. Clement, of Rome, whose writings and whose Basilica remain with us unto the present day; Claudia, a British Princess, a Christian convert, and the protÉgÉe of an Emperor; Pudens, her husband, whose daughter and hers was the foundress of the primitive Cathedral of Rome.

This church—I digress to state—is now joined to a convent in Via Quatro Fontane. It occupies the site of the house of the daughters of Pudens—Prudentia and Praxedes. Or—what is more likely,—it was an enlargement of the family chapel—or “Basilica.” The repute of these sisters, the children of the noble pair who were Paul’s fellow-laborers, has descended to us by more trustworthy channels than those through which church-legends are generally transmitted. In the early persecutions their house was a refuge for the fugitive, a hospital for the wounded and dying,—a sacred morgue for bodies cast forth from torture-chamber and scaffold, to be eaten of dogs and crows. In one of the chapels of the old church is a mosaic of these sisters of mercy, pressing sponges soaked in martyrs’ blood into a golden urn. Another depicts them in the presence of their enthroned Lord, and, standing near, Paul and Peter. The women hold between them the martyr’s crown, earned for themselves by fidelity to the Faith and friends of their parents.

One of Paul’s disciples was a Roman matron named Lucina, who—to return to our tradition—gained possession of the Apostle’s lifeless body, and buried it in her own catacomb or vineyard in the vicinity of the Ostian Gate. Eusebius says the catacomb was shown in his day; Chrysostom, that “the grave of St. Paul is well known.”

“St. Cyprian”—writes Macduff—“is the interpreter, in a single sentence, of the sentiment of the faithful in those ages: ‘To the bodies of those who depart by the outlet of a glorious death, let a more zealous watchfulness be given.’ Can we believe that those who by means of rude sarcophagi and inscriptions in the vaults of the Catacombs, took such pains to mark the dormitory of their sainted dead, would omit rearing a befitting memorial in the case of their illustrious spiritual chief?”

From the same catacomb have been unearthed inscriptions belonging to the Pauline era. The story was so thoroughly believed in the reign of Constantine that he built the original Basilica of St. Paul’s above this catacomb, and placed the bones of Paul, or relics supposed to be his, within the crypt. Since that date, this church has had them in ward.

With these credentials fresh in our memories, we took advantage of a very mild morning whose influences somewhat tempered the chill of aisles and chapels, to make a prolonged examination of San Paolo-fuori-le-mura—St. Paul’s-beyond-the-Wall. The outside is, as I have intimated, tamely ugly. He who passes it by will remember it as the least comely of the hundred unsightly churches in and about the city. From the moment one enters the immense nave,—stands between the columns of yellowish alabaster, presented by Mehemet Ali, which are the prelude to a double rank of eighty monoliths of polished granite, cut from the Simplon,—to his exit, the spectacle is one of bewildering magnificence. Macduff likens the floor to a “sea of glass,” nor is the figure overstrained. The illusion is heightened by the reflection upon the highly-polished surface of the brilliant tints of the series of mosaic medallions, each the portrait of a pope, set in the upper part of the wall and girdling, in a sweep of splendor, nave and transept. The blending and shimmer of the gorgeous colors upon the marble mirror are like the tremulous motion of a lake just touched by the breeze. The costliest marbles, such as we are used to see wrought into small ornaments for the homes of the wealthy, are here employed with lavishness that makes tales of oriental luxury altogether credible, and the Arabian Nights plausible. Alabaster, malachite, rosso and verde-antique are wrought into columns and altars, and each chapel has its especial treasure of sculpture and painting. The pictures in the Chapel of St. Stephen, representing the trial and death of the martyr, would, by themselves, make the church noteworthy.

Surrounded by this inconceivable wealth of splendor, rises a baldacchino surmounted by a dome, supported by four pillars of red alabaster, also the gift of the Turkish Pacha. An angel stands at each corner of the canopy. Within this miniature temple is another, and an older, being the altar-canopy, saved from the fire that, in 1823, destroyed the greater portion of the ancient building. Under this, again, is the marble altar—crimson and emerald—enshrining it is said, the bones of St. Paul. The inscription runs along the four sides of the baldacchino:

A railing, inclosing an area of perhaps a dozen yards, prevents too close an approach to the altar.

“You must first have a permesso from the Pope, or, at least, from a Cardinal,” said a passing verger to whom we communicated our desire to go in. Discovering, upon trial, that the gate was not locked, we felt strongly inclined to make an independent sally, but were withheld by a principle to which we endeavored to be uniformly true,—namely,—obedience to law, and what the usages of the time and place decreed to be order. A priest, belonging, we guessed from his dress, to a higher order than most of those we had encountered in our tour of the building, knelt on the low step surrounding the railing, and while my companions strolled on, I loitered near the forbidden gate, one eye upon him who prayed at the shrine of “Sancte Paule Apostole.” When he arose, I accosted him, having had leisure in which to study a diplomatic address. I chanced to have in the pocket of my cloak a box of Roman pearls and other trinkets I had bought that forenoon. Producing this, as a prefatory measure, and beginning with the conventional, “Pardon, Monsieur!” I informed him in the best French at my command, that I was a stranger and an American—facts he must have gleaned before I had dropped three words;—that, although not a Roman Catholic, I desired to lay these trifles upon the tomb of St. Paul. Not out of custom or superstition, but as I might pick a flower from, or touch, in greeting, the grave of a friend.

He had a noble, gentle face and hearkened kindly to my petition.

“I comprehend!” he said, taking the beads from my hand, and, beckoning up a sacristan, motioned him to open the gate.

“You can enter, Madame!” he continued, with a courteous inclination of the head.

I followed the two; stood by while they bent the knee to the altar-step and made the sign of the cross. The superior priest turned to me.

“You know, do you not, that Timothy is buried here, also,” touching a tablet upon which was cut one word—“Timothei.”

“I hope so!” answered I, wistfully.

Was it wrong to hold lovingly the desire—almost the belief—that the “beloved son” had taken alarm at the import and tone of the second epistle from “Paul the Aged,” and come long enough before winter to brighten his last days? “It is possible,” students and professors of Church History concede to those who crave this rounding of a “finished” life. It seemed almost sure, with Paul’s name above us and Timothy’s under my hand.

My new friend smiled. “We believe it. Timothy’s body was brought to Rome after his martyrdom—he outlived his master many years—and interred beside him in the Catacomb of St. Lucina.”

“I know the legend,” I said; “it is very beautiful.”

“It is customary,” the priest went on to say, “to lay chaplets upon the shrine. But you are an American,” another grave smile. “Would you like to look into the tomb?”

He opened a grating in the front of the altar. By leaning forward, I fancied I saw a dark object in the deep recess.

“The sarcophagus is of silver. A cross of gold lies upon it. Then, there is an outer case.”

He knelt, reached the hand holding the beads as far through the opening as his arm would go, and arose.

“They have touched the coffin of St. Paul!” simply and solemnly.

While they lay over his fingers he crossed the beads, murmured some rapid words.

“My blessing will not hurt them, or you!” restoring them to me with the gentle seriousness that marked his demeanor throughout the little scene.

I thanked him earnestly. Whether he were sincere, or acting a well-conned part, his behavior to me was the perfection of high-toned courtesy, I said that he had done me a kindness, and I meant it.

“It is nothing!” was the rejoinder. “It is I who am grateful for the opportunity to render a stranger, and an American, even so slight a service.”

Some of our party made merry over my adventure; affected to see in my appreciation of the increased value of my blest baubles, deflection from the path of Protestantism rectilinear and undefiled. I think all were slightly scandalized when, turning in their walk across the nave, they saw the tableau within the sacred rail; myself, between two priests, and bending toward the open tomb of St. Paul.

To me it is a pleasing and interesting reminiscence, even if the story of Paul’s and Timothy’s tenancy of the crypt be a monkish figment. And this I am loath to admit.