Now Valerianus was filled with a great desire to see Maximus baptised before his own death, so he asked him to delay the execution of the sentence for a few hours and to conduct his prisoners to his own house, where, as he explained, the soldiers could still keep guard over them, so that no lapse from duty could be laid to the notary’s charge. Maximus gladly consented, and led the brothers and their guards to his dwelling—we are not told where it stood—and there Cecilia hastened to rejoin them. No word is recorded of her anguish at seeing her beloved Valerianus all torn and bleeding from the lashes of the whips. Surely she kissed and washed the pitiful wounds so joyously received for Christ’s sake; but this was a time for quick and courageous action, and the one thought in her mind as in that of her husband and his brother was to save as many souls as possible in this supreme hour. She hastened to summon several priests, and, under cover of nightfall, brought them to the house of Maximus, where, by this time, many persons were assembled. The notary, his entire family, and the soldiers under his command listened eagerly to the instructions of the priests, and, before the first gleam of dawn tinged the sky, were all baptised. A great chorus of thanksgiving went up to God. Not one had been left out, not a voice but joined in that pæan. Then, the sun rose and a great silence fell—“Facto magno silentio,” Cecilia spake, not in words of her own choosing—she repeated that splendid battle cry of St. Paul: “Arise, soldiers of Christ! Cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. You have fought a good fight, you have finished your course, you have kept the Faith. Go to receive the Crown of Life which the Just Judge gives to you, and not to you only, but to all who love His coming!” She, who had opened to her dear ones the gates of life, now bade them forth to death. No word she spoke of her own grief, of the desolation that awaited her till her own hour (not far away, as she knew) should come. We are not told whether she accompanied the martyrs to the place of execution. With all her glorious valour she was but a young and loving woman, and God may have chosen to spare her the last dreadful sight, may have led her back to her empty home to pray, rather than out to the public road to shudder and weep.