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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Perpetua: A Tale of Nimes in A.D. 213," S. Baring-Gould presents a richly woven narrative that intertwines historical fact with imaginative storytelling, drawing upon the early Christian martyrdom of Perpetua. Set against the backdrop of Roman North Africa, the novel captures the tension between burgeoning Christian faith and the oppressive pagan regime of the time. Baring-Gould's prose is both evocative and meticulously researched, employing a style that resonates with the traditions of Victorian literature while examining the moral complexities of faith, identity, and sacrifice in a society on the brink of transformation. S. Baring-Gould was a prolific author whose interests in folklore, mythology, and early Christian history informed much of his work. His deep-rooted Christian beliefs and scholarly pursuits into the lives of saints and martyrs led him to dramatize the story of Perpetua, a young noblewoman whose tenacity and faith in the face of persecution powerfully mirror the struggles of early believers. This work reflects Baring-Gould's desire to explore the intersection of personal conviction and societal pressures, making it a pertinent addition to his extensive literary oeuvre. "Perpetua" is highly recommended for readers interested in historical fiction that illuminates the spiritual and ethical dilemmas faced by individuals in their quest for faith. Baring-Gould's compelling depiction of Perpetua's steadfastness offers profound insights into the nature of courage and conviction, rendering this novel not only a captivating read but also a thoughtful exploration of faith's enduring power. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Perpetua. A Tale of Nimes in A.D. 213
Table of Contents
Introduction
Set in Roman Nîmes in A.D. 213, Perpetua traces the collision of private conscience and public duty in a provincial city where ancestral customs, civic expectations, and the pressures of empire shape every choice and test the boundaries of identity.
Perpetua: A Tale of Nîmes in A.D. 213 is a historical novel by S. Baring-Gould, a prolific Victorian author and Anglican clergyman known for his interest in the past and its moral textures, first published in the late nineteenth century within a flourishing market for historically grounded fiction. Anchored in Roman Gaul, the book situates its drama in a specific year and place, inviting readers to see provincial life under the Severan emperors through a carefully imagined lens. Its publication context aligns it with Victorian efforts to blend narrative momentum with period-setting fidelity and reflective, ethically inflected storytelling.
The premise unfolds with clarity: a young woman named Perpetua stands at the center of civic routines and household ties in Nîmes as the novel’s early movement establishes the people and institutions that frame her world. Without rushing to spectacle, the opening situates readers in the rhythms, hierarchies, and ceremonies of a Romanized community and sketches the pressures that arise when personal attachments meet communal expectations. The story invites us to watch Perpetua’s choices take shape against the realities of status, kinship, and the rule of law, presenting a poised, spoiler-safe entry into a life poised between obligation and inward resolve.
Baring-Gould offers an experience characteristic of Victorian historical fiction: measured narration, a steady build of atmosphere, and a preference for moral clarity over sensationalism. The voice is assured and observant, lingering on the social fabric that makes public order and private aspiration comprehensible. Readers can expect scenes that move from intimate domestic moments to civic occasions with deliberation rather than haste, drawing interest from the interplay of character, custom, and power. The mood is serious but not austere, receptive to sentiment without sentimentality, and supported by a learned sensibility that privileges coherence, context, and the quiet accumulation of detail.
Within this frame, the novel engages enduring themes: the nature of belonging in an imperial world; the negotiation between inherited tradition and emergent convictions; the obligations of family, patronage, and community; and the moral stakes of authority, law, and conscience. Perpetua’s circumstances invite questions about how individuals locate themselves within layered identities—local and imperial, private and public—and how the claims of the heart contend with the claims of the city. The setting in early third-century Gaul provides a backdrop for exploring cultural plurality and civic ritual, allowing the narrative to consider how stability and change are experienced at the level of everyday life.
These concerns continue to resonate today, as readers confront their own worlds of overlapping loyalties, contested traditions, and shifting norms. The book’s attention to institutional life and personal integrity encourages reflection on citizenship, duty, and the ethical imagination—issues that echo across centuries. Its portrait of a community negotiating continuity and transformation offers a lens on debates about identity and belonging, while its focus on a single protagonist’s measured choices supports empathy without demanding anachronistic judgments. By grounding large questions in the texture of a particular city and time, the novel remains relevant to contemporary conversations about how people live under complex systems.
For readers drawn to historically attentive fiction set in antiquity, Perpetua presents a disciplined, immersive journey into Roman provincial society, filtered through Victorian craft and conscience. It can be approached as both story and study—an exploration of character in context, and a mediation on how law, custom, and belief intersect in ordinary lives. As an entry into S. Baring-Gould’s broader body of work, it showcases the appeal of his reflective, historically minded prose. Without revealing outcomes, this introduction invites engagement with a narrative that balances human feeling and civic reality, promising a thoughtful, steady, and evocative reading experience.
Synopsis
Set in A.D. 213, Perpetua unfolds in Nemausus, the Roman city now known as Nîmes, during the reign of Emperor Caracalla. The story opens with a clear portrait of civic life shaped by temples, baths, markets, and the looming amphitheatre, where tradition and authority are on public display. Perpetua, a young woman of a respected household, is introduced within this ordered yet restless world. Her family’s standing ties them to municipal responsibilities and Roman custom, while the city’s mixed population of old Gallic stock and colonists reflects the era’s layered loyalties. From the outset, the narrative emphasizes duty, kinship, and the pressures of public expectation.
Perpetua’s immediate circle includes magistrates, clients, and kin who depend on ritual, patronage, and careful alliances to maintain their place. Her education and keen observation bring her into contact with diverse voices—artisans, veterans, foreign traders—each revealing different stakes in the city’s prosperity. Suitors and political matches enter the household conversation, inviting a future mapped by advantage and prudence. At the same time, new religious ideas move quietly among the lower orders, offering a vision of community and mercy that contrasts with the city’s competitive hierarchies. Perpetua listens more than she declares, yet her sympathy begins to lean toward the vulnerable and overlooked.
Public festivals, civic ceremonies, and games thread the narrative, showing both the city’s cohesion and its fractures. A lavish celebration exposes the splendour of Roman culture alongside the brutalities that entertain the crowd. Perpetua’s encounters in the arena and in the crowded streets deepen her unease with spectacle and violence. The text observes her gradual awareness of a quieter community bound by care rather than display, whose gatherings occur away from official processions. This contrast frames her inward conflict as one of loyalty and conscience, without breaking the rules that govern her family’s honour. The city’s monuments become touchstones for choices she has yet to make.
Imperial policy reaches Nîmes with practical force: tighter revenue schemes, obligations tied to citizenship, and stricter insistence on oath-taking sharpen divisions among residents. Local magistrates must execute these demands, and wealthy households navigate new burdens while guarding their reputations. A dispute over taxes, contracts, or guild privileges brings civic interests into collision, drawing Perpetua’s family into negotiations that test their influence. Street murmurs grow about unfair levies and officious informers. The narrative keeps its focus on households and forums, where decisions made at the governor’s desk ripple through workshops and farms. Perpetua watches how law, custom, and resentment entwine in daily life.
The plot narrows to a set of rivalries in which accusations become tools. Allegations of disloyal worship or secret meetings provide leverage against competitors, while piety itself turns into a public performance. Perpetua, caught between filial duty and compassion, faces pressured choices that would bind her to an influential marriage or align her with a different moral horizon. A journey beyond the city—to villas, quarries, and the stark country of garrigues—broadens the canvas. Roman engineering, old Gallic shrines, and roadside altars appear in quiet succession, underscoring the persistence of layered identities. A trusted elder’s counsel urges patience, prudence, and attention to human need.
A turning point arrives in a packed forum and later before the magistrates, when a dispute hardens into formal inquiry. Testimony implicates acquaintances of Perpetua, and the threat of exemplary punishment hangs over proceedings. A young officer, obligated by his oath yet troubled by the ambiance of zeal, emerges as a figure of divided allegiance. Perpetua must decide whether to remain within the safety of her household’s strategies or to speak for clemency and truth. The scenes avoid sensationalism; rather, they show the weight of administrative routine, the burden of precedent, and the quiet courage required to stand within those constraints.
After the inquiry, domestic negotiations intensify. Perpetua’s relatives seek to restore equilibrium through alliances and careful silence, while she redirects her energies toward discreet acts of aid. Visits to kitchens, workshops, and sickrooms display the understated workings of mutual care, contrasting with the rhetoric of public virtue. Pressure for a respectable marriage advances, framed as a remedy for uncertainty. Perpetua learns to balance outward conformity with inward conviction, using the small permissions of household management to support those at risk. The narrative underscores how influence can be exercised without spectacle, and how adherence to conscience need not break social bonds.
Rumour and surveillance increase, and the line between order and fear narrows. Informers prowl, yet outright tumult is averted by mediating figures who value civic peace. Perpetua and her allies attempt to defuse hostilities by emphasizing shared interests—trade, safety, and the city’s standing—over disputes about rites. Scenes along roads, aqueducts, and vineyards frame the movement toward a quiet climax, in which personal choices subtly realign alliances. Without disclosing outcomes, the novel pivots on whether mercy can temper law, and whether private fidelity can coexist with public obligations. The resolution is prepared through character, not spectacle, preserving tension without abrupt surprise.
The closing movement affirms the endurance of civic life amid gradual cultural change. Nîmes remains a Roman city of stone and ceremony, yet the story suggests an emerging ethic that lifts the lowly and honors restraint. Perpetua’s development embodies the negotiation between inherited forms and a gentler rule of life, presenting a path that neither celebrates rebellion nor sanctifies complacency. The monuments—the amphitheatre, the temple, the roads—stand as witnesses to continuity, while the bonds of aid and truth point forward. The novel’s message is measured: within the constraints of empire and household, conscience can act, and quiet steadfastness reshapes a city’s future.
Historical Context
Set in Nemausus (modern Nîmes) in A.D. 213, the narrative unfolds within Gallia Narbonensis, one of Rome’s oldest and most Romanized provinces. The city was a flourishing colonia with monumental Augustan architecture—the Maison Carrée, the great amphitheatre, and the aqueduct fed by the Pont du Gard—testifying to centuries of integration. Politically, the Severan dynasty ruled; Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) had become sole emperor in 211 after Geta’s murder. The Mediterranean trade routes through the Via Domitia connected Nemausus to Italy and Hispania, bringing goods and ideas. This urban, administrative, and cultic landscape frames the book’s conflicts of identity, loyalty, and civic duty.
The Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, issued by Emperor Caracalla, granted Roman citizenship to virtually all free men in the empire and extended Latin rights to many free women. Ancient sources (notably Cassius Dio) suggest fiscal motives: expanding the base for the inheritances and manumission taxes, while projecting imperial magnanimity. In its immediate aftermath, new citizens commonly adopted the nomen “Aurelius,” reflecting the emperor’s own name. The book’s A.D. 213 setting places its characters at the moment when civic statuses shift overnight; it mirrors how freshly minted citizens in Nemausus would renegotiate rights, obligations, and identities within a Roman legal framework they had only partially shared before.
The edict transformed municipal finance and obligation. Citizenship brought liabilities: eligibility for military service and, crucially, exposure to Roman taxes. Decurions (curiales)—the city-council elites responsible for collecting taxes and funding local works—faced intensifying burdens under the Severans, especially after Caracalla raised soldiers’ pay. In Gaul, this created friction between entrenched colonist families and newly enfranchised provincials whose taxes now flowed more directly to Rome. The book’s world reflects this fiscal squeeze, showing a Nemausus where curial office is both honor and trap, and where tax-collection, exemptions, and patronage strain ties among households, clients, and imperial officials.
Citizenship’s legal ramifications were profound. Caracalla’s decree generalized access to Roman private law—wills, contracts, and marriage (conubium)—blurring the old line between cives and peregrini. Yet local iura and customs persisted, producing complex hybrids in disputes over property, dowry, and guardianship. In a city like Nemausus, with deep Augustan traditions, the edict reconfigured social ranking symbols—names, dress, and participation in civic cults—without erasing local pride. The book captures this liminal atmosphere: characters navigate new legal remedies, adopt Roman nomina, and test the boundaries of old privileges, revealing how law could both integrate and unsettle provincial society in 213.
Caracalla’s western movements culminated in the German campaign of 213 against groups along the Upper Rhine and Danube, for which he assumed the title Germanicus Maximus. The militarization affected Gaul through levies, requisitions, and the transit of troops along arterial roads, including the Via Domitia. Earlier, Caracalla had executed the jurist Papinian (212), signaling a harsh consolidation of power. The novel’s setting resonates with this climate: the presence of soldiers, veterans, and imperial couriers in Nemausus underscores a society attentive to edicts and rumor from the Rhine front, while municipal leaders balance loyalty to the emperor with local security and provisioning.
The Romanization of Nemausus was centuries in the making. Founded as a colonia for veterans in the Augustan era, its civic identity was emblazoned on coinage—the crocodile chained to a palm—celebrating the Egyptian victory of 31–30 B.C. The Via Domitia (opened 118 B.C.) tied it to Massilia (Marseille), Narbo (Narbonne), and Hispania, nourishing trade in wine, oil, textiles, and ceramics. Monumental spaces—the Maison Carrée and the amphitheatre—hosted magistracies, spectacles, and imperial cult ceremonies. The book draws on these topographies, staging processions, games, and council sessions that reveal how architecture and ritual sustained Roman order and local prestige in the early third century.
Religious life in early third-century Gaul was plural and politicized. The imperial cult unified cities; local traditions revered the spring of Nemausus; Oriental mysteries like Mithraism thrived among soldiers. Christianity, present in Gaul since at least the Lyon persecutions of 177, remained a minority in Narbonensis; Septimius Severus’ rescript (c. 202) reportedly restricted conversions, though enforcement varied. Caracalla did not mount empire-wide persecutions, yet social suspicion lingered. The novel reflects these currents by juxtaposing public rites at Augustan shrines with private devotions, exploring conscience, loyalty, and communal belonging, and suggesting how faith could both anchor identity and challenge civic expectations in 213.
By situating its drama in Nemausus just after the universal grant of citizenship, the book critiques the Severan social contract: inclusion that expands taxation, militarization, and curial coercion. It exposes the burdens on decurions compelled to underwrite public finance, the precariousness of smallholders drawn into levies, and the thin line between imperial beneficence and extraction. Through scenes of civic ritual and legal contest, it questions whether Roman law equalizes or masks hierarchy. Religious plurality becomes a lens for examining intolerance and opportunism. In portraying newly minted “Aurelii” navigating status and duty, the narrative interrogates class divides and the costs of centralized power.
Perpetua. A Tale of Nimes in A.D. 213
CHAPTER IEST
The Kalends[2] (first) of March.
A brilliant day in the town of Nemausus[1]—the modern Nîmes—in the Province of Gallia Narbonensis, that arrogated to itself the title of being the province, a title that has continued in use to the present day, as distinguishing the olive-growing, rose-producing, ruin-strewn portion of Southern France, whose fringe is kissed by the blue Mediterranean.
Not a cloud in the nemophyla-blue sky. The sun streamed down, with a heat that was unabsorbed, and with rays unshorn by any intervenient vapor, as in our northern clime. Yet a cool air from the distant snowy Alps touched, as with the kiss of a vestal, every heated brow, and refreshed it.
The Alps, though invisible from Nemausus, make [pg 2]themselves felt, now in refreshing breezes, then as raging icy blasts.
The anemones were in bloom, and the roses were budding. Tulips spangled the vineyards, and under the olives and in the most arid soil, there appeared the grape hyacinth and the star of Bethlehem.
At the back of the white city stands a rock, the extreme limit of a spur of the Cebennæ, forming an amphitheatre, the stones scrambled over by blue and white periwinkle, and the crags heavy with syringa and flowering thorns.
In the midst of this circus of rock welled up a river of transparent bottle-green water, that filled a reservoir, in which circled white swans.
On account of the incessant agitation of the water, that rose in bells, and broke in rhythmic waves against the containing breastwork, neither were the swans mirrored in the surface, nor did the white temple of Nemausus reflect its peristyle of channeled pillars in the green flood.
This temple occupied one side of the basin; on the other, a little removed, were the baths, named after Augustus, to which some of the water was conducted, after it had passed beyond the precinct within which it was regarded as sacred.
[pg 3]It would be hard to find a more beautiful scene, or see such a gay gathering as that assembled near the Holy Fountain on this first day of March.
Hardly less white than the swans that dreamily swam in spirals, was the balustrade of limestone that surrounded the sheet of heaving water. At intervals on this breasting stood pedestals, each supporting a statue in Carrara marble. Here was Diana in buskins, holding a bow in her hand, in the attitude of running, her right hand turned to draw an arrow from the quiver at her back. There was the Gallic god Camulus, in harness, holding up a six-rayed wheel, all gilt, to signify the sun. There was a nymph pouring water from her urn; again appeared Diana contemplating her favorite flower, the white poppy.
But in the place of honor, in the midst of the public walk before the fountain, surrounded by acacias and pink-blossomed Judas trees, stood the god Nemausus, who was at once the presiding deity over the fountain, and the reputed founder of the city. He was represented as a youth, of graceful form, almost feminine, and though he bore some military insignia, yet seemed too girl-like and timid to appear in war.
[pg 4]The fountain had, in very truth, created the city. This marvelous upheaval of a limpid river out of the heart of the earth had early attracted settlers to it, who had built their rude cabins beside the stream and who paid to the fountain divine honors. Around it they set up a circle of rude stones, and called the place Nemet[3]—that is to say, the Sacred Place. After a while came Greek settlers, and they introduced a new civilization and new ideas. They at once erected an image of the deity of the fountain, and called this deity Nemausios. The spring had been female to the Gaulish occupants of the settlement; it now became male, but in its aspect the deity still bore indications of feminine origin. Lastly the place became a Roman town. Now beautiful statuary had taken the place of the monoliths of unhewn stone that had at one time bounded the sacred spring.
On this first day of March the inhabitants of Nemausus were congregated near the fountain, all in holiday costume.
Among them ran and laughed numerous young girls, all with wreaths of white hyacinths or of narcissus on their heads, and their clear musical voices rang as bells in the fresh air.
Yet, jocund as the scene was, to such as looked [pg 5]closer there was observable an under-current of alarm that found expression in the faces of the elder men and women of the throng, at least in those of such persons as had their daughters flower-crowned.
Many a parent held the child with convulsive clasp, and the eyes of fathers and mothers alike followed their darlings with a greed, as though desirous of not losing one glimpse, not missing one word, of the little creature on whom so many kisses were bestowed, and in whom so much love was centered.
For this day was specially dedicated to the founder and patron of the town, who supplied it with water from his unfailing urn, and once in every seven years on this day a human victim was offered in sacrifice to the god Nemausus, to ensure the continuance of his favor, by a constant efflux of water, pure, cool and salubrious.
The victim was chosen from among the daughters of the old Gaulish families of the town[1q], and the victim was selected from among girls between the ages of seven and seventeen. Seven times seven were bound to appear on this day before the sacred spring, clothed in white and crowned with spring flowers. None knew which would be chosen and which rejected. The selection was not made by either the [pg 6]priests or the priestesses attached to the temple. Nor was it made by the magistrates of Nemausus. No parent might redeem his child. Chance or destiny alone determined who was to be chosen out of the forty-nine who appeared before the god.
Suddenly from the temple sounded a blast of horns, and immediately the peristyle (colonnade) filled with priests and priestesses in white, the former with wreaths of silvered olive leaves around their heads, the latter crowned with oak leaves of gold foil.
The trumpeters descended the steps. The crowd fell back, and a procession advanced. First came players on the double flute, or syrinx, with red bands round their hair. Then followed dancing girls performing graceful movements about the silver image of the god that was borne on the shoulders of four maidens covered with spangled veils of the finest oriental texture. On both sides paced priests with brazen trumpets.
Before and behind the image were boys bearing censers that diffused aromatic smoke, which rose and spread in all directions, wafted by the soft air that spun above the cold waters of the fountain.
Behind the image and the dancing girls marched [pg 7]the priests and priestesses, singing alternately a hymn to the god.
Then the priests and priestesses drew up in lines between the people and the fountain, and the ædile [pg 8]of the city, standing forth, read out from a roll the names of seven times seven maidens; and as each name was called, a white-robed, flower-crowned child fluttered from among the crowd and was received by the priestly band.
When all forty-nine were gathered together, then they were formed into a ring, holding hands, and round this ring passed the bearers of the silver image.
Now again rose the hymn:
And as the bearers carried the image round the circle, suddenly a golden apple held by the god, fell and touched a graceful girl who stood in the ring.
“Come forth, Lucilla,” said the chief priestess. “It is the will of the god that thou speak the words. Begin.”
Then the damsel loosed her hands from those she held, stepped into the midst of the circle and raised the golden pippin. At once the entire ring of children began to revolve, like a dance of white butter[pg 9]flies in early spring; and as they swung from right to left, the girl began to recite at a rapid pace a jingle of words in a Gallic dialect, that ran thus:
As she spoke she indicated a child at each numeral,
Now there passed a thrill through the crowd, and the children whirled quicker.
At the word “last” she threw the apple and struck a girl, and at once left the ring, cast her coronet of narcissus into the fountain and ran into the crowd. With a gasp of relief she was caught in the arms of her mother, who held her to her heart, and sobbed [pg 10]with joy that her child was spared. For her, the risk was past, as she would be over age when the next septennial sacrifice came round.
Now it was the turn of Alcmene.
She held the ball, paused a moment, looking about her, and then, as the troop of children revolved, she rattled the rhyme, and threw the pippin at a damsel named Tertiola. Whereupon she in turn cast her garland, that was of white violets, into the fountain, and withdrew.
Again the wreath of children circled and Tertiola repeated the jingle till she came to “Touched at last,” when a girl named Ælia was selected, and came into the middle. This was a child of seven, who was shy and clung to her mother. The mother fondled her, and said, “My Ælia! Rejoice that thou art not the fated victim. The god has surrendered thee to me. Be speedy with the verse, and I will give thee crustulæ that are in my basket.”
So encouraged, the frightened child rattled out some lines, then halted; her memory had failed, and she had to be reminded of the rest. At last she also was free, ran to her mother’s bosom and was comforted with cakes.
A young man with folded arms stood lounging [pg 11]near the great basin. He occasionally addressed a shorter man, a client apparently, from his cringing manner and the set smile he wore when addressing or addressed by the other.
“By Hercules!” said the first. “Or let me rather swear by Venus and her wayward son, the Bow-bearer, that is a handsome girl yonder, she who is the tallest, and methinks the eldest of all. What is her name, my Callipodius?”
“She that looks so scared, O supremity of excellent youths, Æmilius Lentulus Varo! I believe that she is the daughter and only child of the widow Quincta, who lost her husband two years ago, and has refused marriage since. They whisper strange things concerning her.”
“What things, thou tittle-tattle bearer?”
“Nay, I bear but what is desired of me. Didst thou not inquire of me who the maiden was? I have a mind to make no answer. But who can deny anything to thee?”
“By the genius of Augustus,” exclaimed the patron, “thou makest me turn away my head at thy unctuous flattery. The peasants do all their cooking in oil, and when their meals be set on the table the appetite is taken away, there is too much [pg 12]oil. It is so with thy conversation. Come, thy news.”
“I speak but what I feel. But see how the circle is shrunk. As to the scandal thou wouldst hear, it is this. The report goes that the widow and her daughter are infected with a foreign superstition, and worship an ass’s head.”
“An ass’s head hast thou to hold and repeat such lies. Look at the virgin. Didst ever see one more modest, one who more bears the stamp of sound reason and of virtue on her brow. The next thou wilt say is——”
“That these Christians devour young children.”
“This is slander, not scandal. By Jupiter Camulus! the circle is reduced to four, and she, that fair maid, is still in it. There is Quinctilla, the daughter of Largus; look at him, how he eyes her with agony in his face! There is Vestilia Patercola. I would to the gods that the fair—what is her name?”
“Perpetua, daughter of Aulus Har——”
“Ah!” interrupted the patron, uneasily. “Quinctilla is out.”
“Her father, Aulus Harpinius——”
“See, see!” again burst in the youth Æmilius, [pg 13]“there are but two left; that little brown girl, and she whom thou namest——”
“Perpetua.”
Now arrived the supreme moment—that of the final selection. The choosing girl, in whose hand was the apple, stood before those who alone remained. She began:
