We left Pancratius amused at Majus’s rude attempts in glyptic art; his next step was to address him.
“Do you always execute these inscriptions yourself?”
“Oh, no,” answered the artist, looking up and smiling. “I do them for poor people who cannot afford to pay a better hand. This was a good woman who kept a small shop in the Vianova, and you may suppose did not become rich, especially as she was very honest. And yet a curious thought struck me as I was carving her epitaph.”
“Let me hear it, Majus.”
“It was, that perhaps some thousand years hence or more, Christians might read with reverence my scratches on the wall, and hear of poor old Pollecla and her barley stall with interest, while the inscription of not a single emperor, who persecuted the Church, would be read or even known.”
“Well, I can hardly imagine that the superb mausoleums of sovereigns will fall to utter decay, and yet the memory of a market-wife descend to distant ages. But what is your reason for thinking thus?”
“Simply because I would sooner commit to the keeping of posterity the memory of the pious poor than that of the wicked rich. And my rude record may possibly be read when triumphal arches have been demolished. It’s dreadfully written though, is it not?”
A gallery in the Cemetery of St. Agnes, on the Nomentan Way.
“Never mind that; its simplicity is worth much fine writing. What is that slab leaning against the wall?”