It was necessary to give this explanation of certain symbols, and to justify it by sufficient examples, before we proceed to study any of the more complex paintings in the Catacombs. But now, with these thoughts in our minds, let us enter the Cemetery of St. Callixtus, and look on a figure represented two or three times on a wall of one of its most ancient chambers: a fish swimming and carrying on its back a basket of bread, and in the midst of the loaves of bread, a glass vessel containing a red liquid. What is this but bread and wine, the elements of the Sacrament of Love, and Jesus Christ Its reality? St. Jerome, when speaking of a holy bishop of Toulouse who had sold the gold and silver vessels of his church to relieve the poor, uses these words, “What can be more rich than a man who carries the body of Christ in a basket of wicker-work, and the blood of Christ in a vessel of glass?” Here are undeniably the basket of wicker-work and the vessel of glass; and who can doubt that we have the other also, veiled under the figure of the fish? [Illustration: _Consecration of the Holy Eucharist._] Let us go to another part of the same cemetery, and consider a painting which with some variations is repeated in three or four successive chambers, all opening out of one of the primitive galleries. Bread and fish lie on a three-legged table, and several baskets of bread are arranged along the floor in front of it, or a man and woman stand by the side of the table. The woman has her arms outstretched in the form of a cross, the ancient attitude of Christian prayer; the man, too, is stretching forth his hands, but in another way: he holds them forward, and especially his right hand, over the bread and fish, in such a way as to press upon every Catholic intelligence the idea that he is blessing or consecrating what is before him. To modern eyes, indeed, his vestment does not look worthy of one engaged in the highest act of Christian worship; perhaps, at first sight, it almost strikes us as hardly decent. Nevertheless, to the Christian archæologist, this very vestment is a strong confirmation of the view we are taking of the real sense of the painting. For it is the Greek _pallium_, or philosophers’ cloak; and we know that at the time to which this painting belongs (the end of the second or beginning of the third century) it was a common practice to preach the Word of God in this particular costume. Tertullian, who was living at the same time, wrote a treatise _De Pallio_, in which, in his own peculiar style, he defended its use, and congratulated the _pallium_ on its promotion to be a Christian vestment. It was not until fifty years later that St. Cyprian objected to it, both as not sufficiently modest in itself and as vainglorious in its signification.