Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/697

Rh, lest you destroy us all; for if you perish, we must all of us mourn in disgrace." The old gentleman, with much tenderness, kissed her hands, threw himself at her feet, weeping and calling her no longer his daughter, but his sovereign. Perpetua could only intreat him to acquiesce in the divine disposal, since she could neither bring herself to commit impiety by sacrificing to false gods, nor to execrate that holy name in which she hoped for salvation; and which alone was competent to save even the parent, whose heart was now so averse.

The next day they were all brought before a crouded court, and examined; her father came there with his little grandson, and taking Perpetua aside, conjured her to have some pity on her child. The procurator joined in the suit, but in vain. The old man then attempting to draw his daughter from the scaffold, the procurator ordered him to be beaten, and a blow, which he received with a staff, was felt by Perpetua very severely. They were then sentenced to be exposed to wild beasts, and returned cheerfully to prison. Perpetua sent to her father for her child, which he refused to return.

Felicitas, who was with child, and feared her execution would be deferred, was now delivered. One of the door-keepers, who perhaps expected to have found in her a stoical insensibility, and heard her cries, said "do you complain of this? what will you do when you are exposed to the beasts?" Felicitas answered, with a sagacity truly christian, "it is I that suffer now; but then there will be another with me, because I shall suffer for his sake." Her new-born daughter was delivered to a christian, who nursed it as her own. The