Although Perpetua was greatly exhausted by the strain to which she had been exposed during the day, she could not rest when left to herself in a quiet room, so alarmed was she at the absence of her mother. An hour passed, then a second. Finally, steps sounded in the corridor before her chamber, and she knew that she must rise from the couch on which she had cast herself and continue her flight. A slave presented herself to inform Perpetua that Callipodius had returned with the tidings that her mother was unable at once to rejoin her, that she was well and safe, and had preceded her to Ad Fines; that she desired her daughter to follow with the utmost expedition, and that she was impatient to embrace her. The slave woman added that the streets were now quiet, the city gates were open, and that the litter was at the door in readiness. “I will follow you with all speed. Leave me to myself.” Then, when the slave had withdrawn, Perpetua hastily arranged her ruffled hair, extended her arms, and turning to the east, invoked the protection of the God who had promised, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” On descending to the _atrium_, Perpetua knelt by the water‐tank and bathed her face and neck. Then she mounted the litter that awaited her outside the house. The bearers at once started at a run, nor did they desist till they had passed through the city gate on the road that led to the mountain range of the Cebennæ. This was no military way, but it led into the pleasant country where the citizens of Nemausus and some of the rich merchants of Narbo had their summer quarters. The gray dawn had appeared. Market people from the country were coming into the town with their produce in baskets and carts. The bearers jogged along till the road ascended with sufficient rapidity to make them short of breath. The morning was cold. A streak of light lay in the east, and the wind blew fresh from the same quarter. The colorless white dawn overflowed the plain of the Rhodanus, thickly strewn with olives, whose gray foliage was much of the same tint as the sky overhead. To the south and southeast the olive plantations were broken by tracts of water, some permanent lagoons, others due to recent inundations. To the right, straight as an arrow, white as snow, ran the high road from Italy to Spain, that crossed the Rhodanus at Ugernum, the modern Beaucaire, and came from Italy by Tegulata, the scene of the victory of Marius over the Cimbri, and by Aquæ Sextiæ and its hot springs.