some drunken bout, the
little church above-ground, had penetrated at the same time into the
tomb beneath in search of treasure, and finding none, dispersed the
bones in the sarcophagi they had opened. They had left open the aperture
leading downward, which had been matted over by a thick growth of ivy
and wild clematis. One day, while surveying the remains of the Christian
church, always in hopes of discovering in it a former temple of the
Pagans, Filarete had walked into that tuft of solid green, and found
himself, buried and half stunned, in the mouth of the tomb below. It
was through this that he bade Domenico follow him, bearing a certain
mysterious package in his cloak, one January day of the year fourteen
hundred and eighty-eight.

Above-ground it had frozen in the night; here below, when they had
descended the rugged sepulchral stairs, the air had a damp warmth, an
odd feel of inhabitation. Above-ground, also, everything lay in ruins,
while here all was intact. As the light of the torches moved slowly
along the vaulted and stuccoed ceilings, it showed the delicate lines
of a profusion of little reliefs and ornaments, fresh as if cast and
coloured yesterday. Slender garlands of leaves, and long knotted ribbons
and veils in lowest relief partitioned the space; and framed by them, now
round, now oval, now oblong, were medallions of naked gods banqueting
and playing games, of satyrs and nymphs dancing, nereids swinging on
the backs of hippocamps, tritons curling their tails and blowing their
horns, Cupids fluttering among griffins and chimaeras; a life of laughter
and love, which mocked the eye, starting into vividness in one place,
dying away in a mere film where the torchlight pressed on too closely
in others. All along the walls, below the line of the stuccoes, were
excavated shelves, on which stood numbers of small cinerary boxes, each
bearing a name. In the middle of the vaulted chamber was a huge stone
coffin, carved with revelling Bacchantes, and grim tragic masks at its
corners; and all round the coffin, broken in one of its flanks by the
tools of the treasure-seeker, lay bones and skulls, dispersed on the
damp ground even as the Goths had left them.

It was this sarcophagus which, with its Dionysiac revels, and the name
of one Dionysius carved on it, a freedman of the Flavians, had led
Filarete to consider the tomb as a kind of temple consecrated to
Bacchus.

Filarete bade Domenico stick the pointed end o