body pierced through and through and torn piecemeal by so many
tortures, of which a single one should have sufficed to kill her; to
which she only replied, 'I am a Christian.'"

The recital goes on to tell how she was then cast into a dungeon--her
feet compressed and dragged out to the utmost tension of the
muscles--then left alone in darkness until new methods of torture could
be devised.

Finally she was brought, with other Christians, into the amphitheatre,
hanging from a Cross to which she was tied, and there thrown to the
beasts. As the beasts refused to touch her she was taken back to the
dungeon to be reserved for another occasion, being brought out daily to
witness the fate and suffering of her friends and fellow-martyrs; still
answering the oft-repeated question, "I am a Christian."

The writer goes on to say, "After she had undergone fire, the talons of
beasts, and every agony which could be thought of, she was wrapped in a
network and thrown to a bull, who tossed her in the air"--and her
sufferings were ended.

Truly it cost something to say "I am a Christian" in those days.

Marcus Aurelius probably gave orders for the persecution at Lyons, with
little knowledge of what would be the nature of those persecutions, or
of the religion he was trying to exterminate. Some of the hours spent
in writing introspective essays would have been well employed in
studying the period in which he lived, and the empire he ruled.

Paganism and Druidism, those twin monsters, receded before the