“It is useless,” she replied, “to tempt me longer. My resolution is unalterable. I despise thy false divinities, and can only love and serve the one living God. Eternal Ruler, open wide the heavenly gates, until lately closed to man. Blessed Christ, call to Thee the soul that cleaveth unto Thee: victim first to Thee by virginal consecration; now to Thy Father by martyrdom’s immolation.”[207]
“I waste time, I see,” said the impatient prefect, who saw symptoms of compassion rising in the multitude. “Secretary, write the sentence. We condemn Agnes, for contempt of the imperial edicts, to be punished by the sword.”
“On what road, and at what mile-stone, shall the judgment be executed?”[208] asked the headsman.
“Let it be carried into effect at once,” was the reply.
Agnes raised for one moment her hands and eyes to heaven, then calmly knelt down. With her own hands she drew forward her silken hair over her head, and exposed her neck to the blow.[209] A pause ensued, for the executioner was trembling with emotion, and could not wield his sword.[210] As the child knelt alone, in her white robe, with her head inclined, her arms modestly crossed upon her bosom, and her amber locks hanging almost to the ground, and veiling her features, she might not unaptly have been compared to some rare plant, of which the slender stalk, white as the lily, bent with the luxuriancy of its golden blossom.
The judge angrily reproved the executioner for his hesitation, and bid him at once do his duty. The man passed the back of his rough left hand across his eyes, as he raised his sword. It was seen to flash for an instant in the air; and the next moment, flower and stem were lying scarcely displaced on the ground. It might have been taken for the prostration of prayer, had not the white robe been in that minute dyed into a rich crimson—washed in the blood of the Lamb.
The man on the judge’s right hand had looked with unflinching eye upon the stroke, and his lip curled in a wicked triumph over the fallen. The lady opposite had turned away her head, till the murmur, that follows a suppressed breath in a crowd, told her all was over. She then boldly advanced forward, unwound from round her person her splendid brocaded mantle, and stretched it as a pall, over the mangled body. A burst of applause followed this graceful act of womanly feeling,[211] as the lady stood, now in the garb of deepest mourning, before the tribunal.
“Sir,” she said in a tone clear and distinct, but full of emotion, “grant me one petition. Let not the rude hands of
The Christian Martyr.