In certain spots there were openings in the roof.
Cæsar had never thought about what the celebrated Catacombs would be like, but he had not expected them so poor and so sinister.
The sensation they caused was disagreeable, a sensation of choking, of suffocation, without one’s really getting any impression of grandeur. The place seemed like an abandoned ant-hill. The wide spaces that opened out at the sides of the passage were chapels, the monk said.
The Trappist cicerone contributed to removing any serious feelings with his chatter and his jokes. Being familiar with these tombs, he had lost respect for them, as sacristans lose it for the saints they brush the dust off of with a feather-duster. Moreover, he judged everything by an esthetic criterion, completely devoid of respect; for him there were only sepulchres with artistic character, or without it; of a good or a poor period; and the latter sort he struck contemptuously with his stick.
The marine Breton was irritated, and asked Cæsar several times:
“Why is that permitted?” “I don’t know,” answered Cæsar.
The monk made extraordinary remarks.
Explaining the life of the Christians in the earliest eras of Christianity, he said:
“In this century the habits of the pontiffs were so lax that the Pope had to go out accompanied by two persons to insure his modest behaviour.”
“Oh, oh!” said a young Frenchman, in a tone of vexation.