“The two Ocelli and poor Veronilla, dreading their living grave, confessed themselves guilty of a crime they loathed, and never committed: they were permitted to choose a milder death. But I am a Roman virgin of loftier lineage and nobler spirit; I can die, but will not justify my persecutor. Celer cleared himself and me by an heroic death; but Valerius Licinianus has purchased life and shame at my expense. His eloquence might have saved us both: he falsely avowed himself a guilty wretch. ‘Licinianus has justified me,’ was Cæsar’s own remark; and he is pardoned, while I am doomed and slandered.” “He is again imprisoned for concealing your freedwoman at one of his farms.” “Ah! by Vesta, a light breaks in upon me. She was fair and young. He loved her then, doubtless; those stolen visits to the temple were really made; yes, and to her. Frail girl! and base calumnious man! O Celer, Celer! and thou didst vainly endure the torturing scourge for both;” and the miserable priestess threw herself upon the ground, and fell into an agony that had no tears, found no relief in sighs and groans. The noble-minded Roman knight’s fate, indeed, had merited and won the admiration of the spectators, and in after years the degraded Licinianus—the poor Sicilian schoolmaster whose Prætorian rank excited such scornful pity—might have envied Celer’s ignominious punishment and heroic death. Cornelia gradually overcame her bitter agony; she looked up once more, and a smile passed over her wan countenance. “We two, Lucia Claudia, were esteemed the pride of the vestal order; and I am condemned for incest,[27] and thou art the widow of a bondwoman’s son, and the wife of a Hebrew freedman.” Lucia Claudia blushed; she felt the sarcasm, but answered it with meek forbearance. “I quitted the college a believer in the God of Israel. How could a Jewish convert minister in the temple of a heathen deity? After this I became a Christian, and sought to bring in him who had made me a worshipper of the true God. He betrayed the brethren, in the blind darkness of his bigoted self-righteousness, and I gave my hand to Nymphidius to save my fellow-Christians. It was feminine weakness: I should have trusted the Church to Him whose faith I had embraced, for not a hair could be torn from a Christian’s head without divine permission. Of that unholy marriage I will not speak, which linked together the believing wife and unbelieving husband in an unequal and abhorred yoke. Listen, Cornelia, while I tell thee how it was severed, and recognise His hand who saved one and destroyed the other;” and Lucia Claudia related her own history, and that of Adonijah. She then unfolded the Christian mission to the condemned Maxima, and implored her “to repent and be baptized.”