Justina was a young and lovely pagan maiden, daughter of a priest of the idols, after the manner of Cymodoce. Her window opened on a court which gave upon the Christian church, so that she heard daily the pure and recollected voice of a deacon reading the holy gospels aloud. The unknown words touched and stirred her heart, so deeply indeed that when her mother remarked one evening how grave she seemed and sought to be the confidant of her preoccupations, Justina fell at her feet and said: “Bless me, my mother, or forgive me: I am a Christian.” The mother wept and embraced her, after which she returned to her husband and related what she had heard. That night in their sleep the parents were both visited by the same dream. A divine light descended upon them, a sweet voice called them and said: “Come unto me, all ye that are afflicted and I will comfort you. Come, ye beloved of my father, and I will give unto you the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” The morning dawned; father and mother blessed their daughter. All three were enrolled among the catechumens and, after the usual probation, they were admitted to Holy Baptism. Justina returned white and radiant from the church, between her mother and aged father, when two forbidding men, wrapped in their mantles, passed as Faust and Mephistopheles going by Margaret: they were Cyprian the magician and his disciple Acladius. They stopped dazzled by the apparition, but Justina went on without seeing them and reached home with her family. The scene now changes and we are in the laboratory of Cyprian. Circles have been traced, a slaughtered victim still palpitates by a smoking chafing-dish; the genius of darkness stands in the presence of the magician, saying: “Thou hast called me; I come. Speak: what dost thou require?”—“I love a virgin.”—“Seduce her.”—“She is a Christian.”—“Denounce her.”—“I would possess and not lose her: canst thou aid me?”—“I tempted Eve, who was innocent and conversed daily with God Himself. If thy virgin be Christian, know that it is I who caused Jesus Christ to be crucified.”—“Thou wilt deliver her into my hands, therefore.”—“Take this magical unguent, and anoint the threshold of her dwelling: the rest concerns me.” And now Justina is asleep in her small and simple room, but Cyprian is at the door murmuring sacrilegious words and performing horrible rites. The demon creeps to the pillow of the young girl and instils voluptuous dreams full of the image of Cyprian, whom she seems to meet again on issuing from the church. This time, however, she looks at him; she listens, while the things which he whispers fill her heart with trouble. But she moves suddenly, she awakes and signs herself with the cross. The demon vanishes and the seducer, doing sentinel at the door, waits vainly through the whole night.