c is going to restore it to the people rightfully its
owners, and the remembrance of my morning in the Villa Medici will
remain a pure joy. So few joys in this world, even in the very capital
of it, are without some touch of abatement. I could not so much as visit
the Catacombs of Domatilla without suffering a frustration which, though
incidental merely, left a lasting pang of unrequited interest. As we
drew toward the place, I saw in a field the beginning of one of those
domestic dramas which are not attributable to Italy alone. Three
peasants, a man and two women, were engaged in controversy which, on his
side, the man supported with both hands flapping wildly at the heads of
the women, who alertly dodged and circled around him in the endeavor to
close in upon him. It was instantly conjecturable, if not apparent, that
they were his wife and daughter, and that he was the worse for the
vintage of their home acre, and would be the better for being got into
the house and into bed. The conjecture enlisted the worthier instincts
of the witness on the side of the mother and daughter; but he was in no
hurry to have the animated action brought to a close, and was about to
tell his cabman to drive very, very slowly, when suddenly the cab
descended into a valley, and when the eager spectator rose to his former
level again the stone wall had risen with him, and he never knew the end
of that passage of real life.

It was impossible to bid the cabman drive back for the close of the
scene; the abrupt conclusion must be accepted as final; but it is proof
of the charm I found in the gentle guide who presently began to marshal
us among the paths of the subterranean sanctuary and cemetery that for
the moment my bitter sense of loss was assuaged, and it only returns now
at long intervals. Such as the woman actors in this brief scene were
some early Christians might have been, and it must have been the
stubborn old pagan spirit I saw surviving in the husband and father. He
was probably such a vessel of wrath as, being filled with Bacchus, would
have lent itself to the persecuting rage of Domitian and helped drive
the emperor's gentle cousin Domatilla into the exile whence she returned
to found a Christian cemetery in her villa. One understands, of course,
under the villa; for the catacombs in some places reach as many as five
levels below the surface. I will not follow the reader with that kind
guide who will cheer his wanderings through t