Fuscianus shrugged his shoulders. “I hate all meddlers with usages that are customary. I hate them as I do a bit of grit in my salad. I put them away.”
The populace became impatient, shouted and stamped. Some, provided with empty gourds, in which were pebbles, rattled them, and made a strange sound as of a hailstorm. Others clacked together pieces of pottery. The magistrate turned to the pontiff on his right and said: “We believe with all our hearts in the gods when we do sacrifice! Oh, mightily, I trow.” Then he laughed again. The priest looked grave for a moment, and then he laughed also.
“Come now,” said Lucius Petronius to the young lawyer, “to this I limit thy interference. Stand by the girl and induce her to yield. By the Bow-bearer! young men do not often fail in winning the consent of girls when they use their best blandishments. It will be a scene for the stage. You have plenty of spectators.”
“Suffer me also to stand beside her,” said the slave-woman Blanda, who had not left Perpetua.
“By all means. And if you two succeed, none will be better content than myself. I am not one who would wish a fair virgin a worse fate than to live and be merry and grow old. Ah me! old age!”
Again the multitude shouted and rattled pumpkins.
“We are detaining the people in the cold,” said the presiding magistrate; “the sports move sluggishly as does our blood.” Then, aside to Fuscianus, “My bricks are becoming sensibly chilled. I require a fresh supply.” Then to the maiden: “Hear me, Perpetua, daughter of Harpinius Læto that was—we and the gods, or the gods and we, are indisposed to deal harshly. Throw a few crumbs of incense on the altar, and you shall pass at once up those steps to the row of seats where sit the white-robed priestesses with their crowns. I shall be well content.”
“That is a thing I cannot do,” said Perpetua firmly.
“Then we shall have to make you,” said the magistrate in hard tones. He was angry, vexed. “You will prove more compliant when you have been extended on the rack. Let her be disrobed and tortured.”
Then descended into the arena two young men, who bowed to the magistrate, solicited leave, and drew forth styles or iron pens and tablets covered with wax. These were the scribes of the Church employed everywhere to take down a record of the last interrogatory of a martyr. Such records were called the “Acts.” Of them great numbers have been preserved, but unhappily rarely unfalsified. The simplicity of the acts, the stiffness of style, the absence of all miraculous incident, did not suit the taste of mediæval compilers, and they systematically interpolated the earlier acts with harrowing details and records of marvels. Nevertheless, a certain number of these acts remain uncorrupted, and with regard to the rest it is not difficult to separate in them that which is fictitious from that which is genuine. Such notaries were admitted to the trials and executions with as much indifference as would be newspaper reporters nowadays.