“Ah, that is a beautiful inscription brought us to put up; you will see the writer and engraver were different people. It is to go to the cemetery at the Lady Agnes’s villa, on the Nomentan way. I believe it is in memory of a most sweet child, whose death is deeply felt by his virtuous parents.” Pancratius took a light to it, and read as follows:
Inscription of the Cemetery of Saint Agnes.
“The innocent boy Dionysius lieth here among the saints. Remember us in your holy prayers, the writer and the engraver.”
“Dear, happy child!” continued Pancratius, when he had perused the inscription: “add me the reader, to the writer and carver of thine epitaph, in thy holy prayers.”
“Amen,” answered the pious family.
But Pancratius, attracted by a certain husky sound in Diogenes’s voice, turned round, and saw the old man vigorously trying to cut off the end of a little wedge which he had driven into the top of the handle of his pick-axe, to keep it fast in the iron; but every moment baffled by some defect in his vision, which he removed by drawing the back of his brawny hand across his eyes. “What is the matter, my good old friend?” said the youth kindly. “Why does this epitaph of young Dionysius particularly affect you?”
“It does not of itself; but it reminds me of so much that is past, and suggests so much that may be about to come, that I feel almost faint to think of either.”
“What are your painful thoughts, Diogenes?”
“Why, do you see, it is all simple enough to take into one’s arms a good child like Dionysius, wrapped in his cerecloth, fragrant with spices, and lay him in his grave. His parents may weep, but his passage from sorrow to joy was easy and sweet. It is a very different thing, and requires a heart as hardened as mine by practice” (another stroke of the hand across the eyes) “to gather up hastily the torn flesh and broken limbs of such another youth, to wrap them hurriedly in their winding-sheet, then fold them into another sheet full of lime, instead of balsams, and shove them precipitately into their tomb.[75] How differently one would wish to treat a martyr’s body!”