In the early persecution of 202 under the Emperor Severus, a touching scene occurred between a young wife, aged twenty-two, named Perpetua, and her father. She was arrested, and implored by her father, who threw himself in tears at her feet, beseeching her to renounce her creed, and not bring ruin on her brothers and parents and relatives. But she gloried in being called and in calling herself a Christian. The father brought her child in his arms, and called on her in vain to spare his grey hairs and to pity the child, and join in the Pagan sacrifice to the Emperor. The guards at last ordered him to be removed after his last appeal to her pity; and after tearing the hair of his beard in his anguish, she only exclaimed, "I am pained at the sight of my father as if I had been struck with a blow. His grief is enough to move any creature." But no other faltering word escaped her. She and some young companions were thrown to the wild beasts to gratify the brutal tastes of the multitude when celebrating a prince's birthday. The cruel spectacle made such an impression on one of the jailers, named Pudens, that he felt an irresistible impulse to acknowledge that there must be something divine in such a triumph over human weakness. He could not choose but indulge the friends of the wretched prisoners by giving them access to cheer the latter in their desolate state. ST. URSULA AND THE ELEVEN THOUSAND VIRGIN MARTYRS (A.D. 237). Ursula and eleven thousand British virgins were said to have suffered martyrdom at Cologne in 237. The story is somewhat vague, and some even suggest that, another virgin being named _Undecimilla_, some play on that word gave rise to the extraordinary number mentioned. The writers of the tenth century began to tell the story that Ursula was the daughter of a British prince, and had taken a vow of celibacy, but her father had wished her to marry the son of some ferocious tyrant. To get quit of the proposal, she said she would agree if her father and the king should choose each ten virgins of her own age and beauty, and that each of those ten should have a thousand damsels under them, and that they should all be allowed to cruise about as unsullied virgins for three years in eleven triremes. The tyrant succeeded in collecting the virgins and in providing gaily equipped galleys, and they put to sea and were driven by stress of weather up the Rhine to Cologne. From that place they went to visit the Apostles' tombs at Rome, and on their return the barbarous Huns murdered them all at Cologne. The church of St. Ursula at Cologne is still visited by pilgrims who invoke the saint. ST. BARBARA AND THE PRISON TOWER (A.D. 250).