There are worse places to wander in, and to dream in, than these open galleries, where the silent ones stand, side by side, upon their funeral stones, and the chickens scratch among Roman capitals. The gardienne's children are at play on the path, and, in the centre of the green cloister garth, the ripening pears tremble upon the swaying branches. The old caretaker--blessed among caretakers--leaves you alone, until you summon her. She is ready for a chat, but can impart no information whatever concerning the monuments in her charge. "Good-bye, Madame; and when I come again, in the spring, I shall expect to find the bell mended." "Parfaitement, Monsieur; Ha! ha! ha!" and her gossip friend, across the road, joins in the chorus, "Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha!" But the bell will not be mended--and they know it. The Musée municipal in the Hotel de Ville--the last musée which I shall inflict upon the reader--is as dreary as a haunted house, and much less interesting. You wander through gallery after gallery of second and third rate paintings, to be rewarded, at last, in the end room, by two little bronze crupellaires, or fighting gladiators of the first century, so called because, according to Tacitus, they were completely hidden beneath an iron armour, so thick as to make the wearer as immune against blows as he was incapable of dealing them.[63] The most interesting thing in the museum is the famous Greek inscription which has excited the interest of antiquarians and theologians all over the world. The stone is a piece of white marble, broken into fragments which are pieced together again, and on which is a Greek acrostic, and something supposed to stand for a Sigma. The inscription, believed to be of the third or fourth century, is as follows. The translation I give is from the French, as quoted by Hamerton in "The Mount." "O divine race of heavenly Ιχθυς, receive with a heart full of respect life immortal among the mortals. Renew thy soul's youth, O my friend! in the divine waters, by the eternal waves of wisdom that flow from the true riches. Receive the delicious food of the Saviour of saints. Take, eat and drink, thou holdest Ιχθυς in thy hands. Ιχθυς grant me this grace, ardently I desire it, Master and Saviour; may my mother rest in peace, I conjure thee, light of the dead. Aschandeus, my father, thou whom I cherish, with my tender mother and all my relations in the peace of Ιχθυς. remember thy Pectorius."[64]