I could multiply quotations of this kind, if they were suited to these pages, and if it were not better to recommend the book for the solitary meditation of my readers; I would point out to be remembered among the most beautiful and consoling pages belonging to our language and religions literature, all the latter part of Chapter VIII. Nothing is wanting to make this exquisite little book of l'Abbé Gerbet's more generally appreciated than it now is but a less frequent combination of dialectics with the expression of affectionate devotion. Generally speaking, the tissue of l'Abbé Gerbet's style is too close; when he has a beautiful thing to say, he does not give it room enough. His talent is like a sacred wood, too thickly grown;--the temple, repository, and altar in its depths are surrounded on all sides, and we can reach them only by footpaths. I suppose that this is because he has always lived too near his own thoughts, never having had the opportunity to develop them in public. Feeble health, and a delicate voice which needs the ear of a friend, have never allowed this rich talent to unfold itself in teaching or in the pulpit. If at any time he had been induced to speak in public, he would have been obliged to clear up, disengage, and enlarge not his views, but the avenues that lead to them.
In 1838, being troubled with an affection of the throat, he went to Rome and, always intending to return home soon, remained there until 1848. It was there that in the leisure moments of a life of devotion and study, in which, too, the most elevated friendship had its share, he composed the first two volumes of the work entitled "A Sketch of Christian Rome," designed to impart to all elevated souls the feeling and idea of the Eternal City. "The fundamental thought in this book," he says, "is to concentrate the visible realities of Christian Rome into a conception and, as it were, a portrait of its spiritual essence. An excellent interpreter in the way he has chosen for himself, he goes on to speak of the monuments not with the dry science of a modern antiquary, [{313}] or with the naïf enthusiasm of a believer of the middle ages, but with a reflective admiration which unites philosophy to piety.
"The study of Rome in Rome," he says again, "leads us to the living springs of Christianity. It refreshes all the good feelings of the heart, and, in this age of storms, sheds a wonderful serenity over the soul. We must not, of course, attach too much importance to the charm which we find in certain studies, for books written with pleasure to one's self run the risk of being written with less charity. But none the less should we thank the Divine Goodness when it harmonizes pleasure with duty."
In these volumes of l'Abbé Gerbet, introductions and dissertations upon Christian symbolism and church history lead to observations full of grace or grandeur, and to beautiful and touching pictures. The Catacombs, which were the cradle and the asylum of Christianity during the first three centuries, interested him especially, and inspired in him thoughts of rare elevation. Here are some verses (for l'Abbé Gerbet is a poet without pretending to be one) which give his first impressions of them, and show the quality of his soul. The piece is called "The Song of the Catacombs," and is intended to be sung. [Footnote 52]
[Footnote 52: We translate "Le Chant des Catacombes" into prose, that the noble ideas may be given with literal accuracy. The author intended it to be sung to the air of "Le Fil de La Vierge" (Scudo). We give one verse of the original:
"Hier j'ai visité les grandes Catacombes
Des temps anciens;
J'ai touché de mon front les immortelles tombes
Des vieux Chrétiens:
Et ni l'astre du jour, ni les célestes sphères,
Lettres du feu,
Ne m'avaient mieux fait lire en profonds caractères
Lo nom de Dieu.">[
"Yesterday I visited the great Catacombs of ancient times. I touched with my brow the immortal tombs of early Christians, and never did the star of day, nor the celestial spheres with their letters of fire, teach me more clearly to read in profound characters the name of God.
"A black-frocked hermit, with blanched hair, walked on in front-- old door-keeper of time, old porter of life and death; and we questioned him about these holy relics of the great fight, as one listens to a veteran's tales of ancient exploits.
"A rock served as portico to the funeral vault; and on its fronton some martyr artist, whose name is known, no doubt, to the angels, had painted the face of Christ, with the fair hair, and the great eyes whence streams a ray of deep gentleness like the heavens.
"Further on, I kissed many a symbol of holy parting upon the tombs. And the palm, and the lighthouse, and the bird flying to God's bosom; and Jonas, leaving the whale after three days, with songs, as we leave this world after three days of trouble called time.
"Here it was that each one, standing beside his ready-made grave, like a living spectre, wrestled the fight out, or laid his head down in expectation! Here, that they might prepare a strong heart beforehand for the great day of suffering, they tried their graves, and tasted the first-fruits of death!
"I sounded with a glance their sacred dust, and felt that the soul had left a breath of life lingering in these ashes; and that in this human sand, which weighs so lightly in our hands, lie, awaiting the great day, germs of the almost god-like forms of eternity.
"Sacred places, where love knew how to suffer purely for the soul's good! In questioning you, I felt that its flame could never perish; for to each being of a day who died to defend the truth, the Being eternal and true, as the price of time, has given eternity.
"Here at each step we behold, as it were, a golden throne, and while treading on tombs we seem to be on Mount Tabor. Go down, go down into the deep Catacombs, into their lowest recesses--go down, and your [{314}] heart shall rise and, looking up from these graves, see heaven!"
Beside these verses, which are not found in the volumes of "Christian Rome," and are only a first utterance, should be placed, as an original picture full of meaning, his words concerning the slow and gradual destruction of the human body in the Catacombs. We all know Bossuet's mot (after Tertullian) in speaking of a human corpse: "It becomes a something unutterable," he exclaims, "which has no name in any language." The following admirable page from l'Abbé Gerbet's book is, as it were, a development and commentary of Bossuet's words. At this first station of the Catacombs he confines himself to the study of the nothingness of life: "the work I do not say of death, but of what comes after death;" the idea of awakening and of future life follows later. Listen:
"In your progress you review the various phases of destruction, as one observes the development of vegetation in a botanic garden from the imperceptible flower to large trees, rich with sap and crowned with great blossoms. In a number of sepulchral niches that have been opened at different periods one can follow, in a manner, step by step, the successive forms, further and further removed from life, through which what is there passes before it approaches as closely as possible to pure nothingness. Look, first, at this skeleton; if it be well preserved in spite of centuries, it is probably because the niche where it lies was hollowed out of damp earth. Humidity, which dissolves all other things, hardens these bones by covering them with a crust which gives them more consistency than they had when they were members of a living body. But not the less is this consistency a progress of destruction; these human bones are turning to stone. A little further on is a grave where a struggle is going on between the power that makes the skeleton and the power that makes dust; the first defends itself, but the second is gaining ground, though slowly. The combat between life and death that is taking place in you, and will be over before this combat between one death and another, is nearly ended. In the sepulchre near by, of all that was a human frame nothing is left but a sort of cloth of dust, a little tumbled and unfolded like a small whitish shroud, from which a head comes out. Look, lastly, at this other niche; there is evidently nothing there but simple dust, the color of which even is a little doubtful from its slightly reddish tinge. There, you say, is the consummation of destruction! Not yet. On looking closely, you discern a human outline: this little heap, touching one of the longitudinal extremities of the niche, is the head; these two heaps, smaller and flatter, placed parallel to each other a little lower down, are the shoulders; these two are the knees. The long bones are represented by feeble trails, broken here and there. This last sketch of man, this vague, rubbed-out form, barely imprinted on an almost impalpable dust, which is volatile, nearly transparent, and of a dull, uncertain white, can best give us an idea of what the ancients called a shade. If, in order to see better, you put your head into the sepulchre, take care; do not move or speak, hold your breath. That form is frailer than a butterfly's wing, more swift to vanish than a dewdrop hanging on a blade of grass in the sunshine; a little air shaken by your hand, a breath, a tone, become here powerful agents that can destroy in a second what seventeen centuries, perhaps, of decay have spared. See, you breathed, and the form has disappeared. So ends the history of man in this world."
This seems to me quite a beautiful view of death, and one that prompts the Christian to rise at once to that which is above destruction and escapes the catacomb--the immortal principle of life, love, sanctity, and [{315}] sacrifice. I can only indicate these noble and interesting considerations to those who are eager to study in material Rome the higher city and its significance.