Page:Plays of Roswitha (1923) St. John.djvu/190

148 and I want no favours from you. You deceive yourself with vain hopes if you suppose that I shall submit.

HADRIAN. Be more careful in your speech or you will make me angry.

HOPE. Be angry. What is it to me?

ANTIOCHUS. I am amazed, Augustus, that you should tolerate for a moment such insolence from a pert little child! I boil with indignation that she should be allowed such licence.

HADRIAN. I wished to be merciful to her youth, but I can no longer be indulgent. She shall be punished as she deserves.

ANTIOCHUS. I wish that were possible.

HADRIAN. Come, lictors, and scourge this little rebel to death with your heaviest rods.

ANTIOCHUS. She deserves to feel the full weight of your anger, as she has mocked your gracious clemency.

HOPE. Here is the only clemency for which I long—here the only mercy I crave.

ANTIOCHUS. Sapientia, what are you murmuring there, standing with uplifted eyes by the body of your dead child?

SAPIENTIA. I am imploring Almighty God to give Hope the same firm courage that He gave Faith.

HOPE. Oh, mother, mother! How wonderful are your prayers! Even as you prayed the uplifted hands of the panting executioners became powerless. I have not felt a twinge of pain.