[Footnote C:  Gueranger, Histoire de St. Cecile. p. 45.]

Coming out from the dark passages of the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, in the clear twilight of a winter’s evening, one sees rising against the red glow of the sky the broken masses of the ancient tombs.  One city of the dead lies beneath the feet, another stretches before the eyes far out of sight.  The crowded history of Rome is condensed into one mighty spectacle.  The ambitions, the hates, the valor, the passions, the religions, the life and death of a thousand years are there; and, in the dimness of the dusky evening, troops of the dead rise before the imagination and advance in slow procession by opposite ways along the silent road.

[To be continued]

* * * * *

THE PURE PEARL OF DIVER’S BAY.

[Concluded.]

V

Did she talk of flesh and blood, when she said that she would find him?—­The summer passed away; and when autumn came, it could not be said that search for the bodies of these fishermen was quite abandoned.  But no fragment of boat, nor body of father or son, ever came, by rumor or otherwise, to the knowledge of the people of the Bay.

The voyage was long to Clarice.  Marvellous strength and acuteness of vision come to the eyes of those who watch.  Keen grow the ears that listen.  The soldier’s wife in the land of Nena Sahib inspires despairing ranks:  “Dinna ye hear the pibroch?  Hark!  ’The Campbells are coming!’”—­and at length, when the hope she lighted has gone out in sullen darkness, and they bitterly resent the joy she gave them,—­lo, the bagpipes, banners, regiment!  The pibroch sounds, “The Campbells are coming!” The Highlanders are in sight!—­But, oh, the voyage was long,—­and Clarice could see no sail, could hear no oar!

Clarice ceased to say that she must find the voyagers.  She ceased to talk of them.  She lived in these days a life so silent, and, as it seemed, so remote from other lives, that it quite passed the understanding of those who witnessed it.  Tears seldom fell from her eyes, complaints never;—­but her interest was aroused by no temporal matter; she seemed, in her thoughts and her desires, as far removed as a spirit from the influences of the external world.

This state of being no person who lives by bread alone could have understood, or endured patiently, in one with whom in the affairs of daily life he was associated.

The Revelator was an exile in Patmos.