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 Cœli!” 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.