arewell to Vinicius
forever. She knew that no one was permitted to enter the prison,
and that she could see Vinicius only from the arena. She begged him
therefore to discover when the turn of the Mamertine prisoners would
come, and to be at the games, for she wished to see him once more in
life. No fear was evident in her letter. She wrote that she and the
others were longing for the arena, where they would find liberation
from imprisonment. She hoped for the coming of Pomponia and Aulus; she
entreated that they too be present. Every word of her showed ecstasy,
and that separation from life in which all the prisoners lived, and at
the same time an unshaken faith that all promises would be fulfilled
beyond the grave.

"Whether Christ," wrote she, "frees me in this life or after death,
He has promised me to thee by the lips of the Apostle; therefore I am
thine." She implored him not to grieve for her, and not to let himself
be overcome by suffering. For her death was not a dissolution of
marriage. With the confidence of a child she assured Vinicius that
immediately after her suffering in the arena she would tell Christ that
her betrothed Marcus had remained in Rome, that he was longing for her
with his whole heart. And she thought that Christ would permit her soul,
perhaps, to return to him for a moment, to tell him that she was living,
that she did not remember her torments, and that she was happy. Her
whole letter breathed happiness and immense hope. There was only one
request in it connected with affairs of earth,--that Vinicius should
take her body from the spoliarium and bury it as that of his wife in the
tomb in which he himself would rest sometime.

He read this letter with a suffering spirit, but at the same time it
seemed to him impossible that Lygia should perish under the claws of
wild beasts, and that Christ would not take compassion on her. But just
in that were hidden hope and trust. When he returned home, he wrote
that he would come every day to the walls of the Tullianum to wait till
Christ crushed the walls and restored her. He commanded her to believe
that Christ could give her to him, even in the Circus; that the great
Apostle was imploring Him to do so, and that the hour of liberation
was near. The converted centurion was to bear this letter to her on the
morrow.

But when Vinicius came to the prison next morning, the centurion left
the rank, approached him first, and said,--

"Listen to me, lord.