“I am poor Emerentiana, her foster-sister,” replied the child; and Fabiola led her kindly by the hand.
The moment the body was removed, a crowd of Christians, children, men, and women, threw themselves forward, with sponges and linen cloths, to gather up the blood. In vain did the guards fall on them, with whips, cudgels, and even with sharper weapons, so that many mingled their own blood with that of the martyr. When a sovereign, at his coronation, or on first entering his capital, throws, according to ancient custom, handfuls of gold and silver coins among the crowd, he does not create a more eager competition for his scattered treasures, than there was among those primitive Christians, for what they valued more than gold or precious stones, the ruby drops which a martyr had poured from his heart for his Lord. But all respected the prior claim of one; and here it was the deacon Reparatus, who, at risk of life, was present, phial in hand, to gather the blood of Agnes’s testimony; that it might be appended, as a faithful seal, to the record of martyrdom on her tomb.
The Resurrection of Lazarus, from the Cemetery of St. Domitilla.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE SAME DAY: ITS THIRD PART.
“I know her,” said Maximian, laughing, as if at the recollection of something very droll. “Poor thing! she sent me a splendid ring, and yesterday asked me for that wretched Sebastian’s life, just as they had finished cudgelling him to death.” And he laughed immoderately, then continued: “Yes, yes, by all means; a little inheritance will console her, no doubt, for the loss of that fellow. Let a rescript be made out, and I will sign it.”
Tertullus produced the one prepared, saying he had fully relied on the emperor’s magnanimous clemency; and the imperial barbarian put a signature to it which would have disgraced a schoolboy. The prefect at once consigned it to his son.
Scarcely had he left the palace, when Fulvius entered. He had been home to put on a proper court attire, and remove from his features, by the bath and the perfumer’s art, the traces of his morning’s passion. He felt a keen presentiment that he should be disappointed. Eurotas’s cool discussion of the preceding evening had prepared him; the cross of all his designs, and his multiplied disappointments that day, had strengthened this instinctive conviction. One woman, indeed, seemed born to meet and baffle him whichever way he turned; but, “thank the gods,” he thought, “she cannot be in my way here. She has this morning blasted my character for ever; she cannot claim my rightful reward; she has made me an outcast; it is not in her power to make me a beggar.” This seemed his only ground of hope. Despair, indeed, urged him forward; and he determined to argue out his claims to the confiscated property of Agnes, with the only competitor he could fear, the rapacious emperor himself. He might as well risk his life over it, for if he failed, he was utterly ruined. After waiting some time, he entered the audience-hall, and advanced with the blandest smile that he could muster to the imperial feet.