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Laeta Acilia uttered these words with hesitation. She paused and blushed. "What is it," Mary Magdalen asked eagerly, "and what desire, lady, has your unsatisfied soul?" Gaining courage little by little, Laeta Acilia replied: "Mary, you are a woman, and though I know you not, I yet may confide to you a woman's secret.
And Mary Magdalen, perceiving that proselytising was not her vocation, retired to a wild cavern since called the Holy Grotto. The sacred historians believe unanimously that Laeta Acilia was not converted to the faith of Christ until many years after this interview which I have faithfully recorded.
Intra quadragesimum pugnae diem lacera corpora, trunci artus, putres virorum equorumque formae, infecta tabo humus, protritis arboribus ac frugibus dira vastitas: nec minus inhumana pars viae, quam Cremonenses lauro rosisque constraverant, exstructis altaribus caesisque victimis, regium in morem: quae, laeta in praesens, mox perniciem ipsis fecere.
Linnaeus said long ago, "Nescio quae facies laeta, glabra plantis Americanis: I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect of American plants;" and I think that in this country there are no, or at most very few, Africanae bestiae, African beasts, as the Romans called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of man.
The slaves, mistaking her for a beggar, were about to drive her away when Laeta Acilia, recognising her at the first glance, rose and ran towards her. "Mary, Mary," she cried, "it is true that you were the favourite of a god. He whom you loved on earth has heard you in Heaven, and through your intercession He has granted my prayer.
"Had not A., who was everywhere present, caused some strong and lightly equipped cohorts to encompass the ground, while part of the cavalry having dismounted, made their way through the thickets, and part on horseback scoured the open woods, some disaster would have prcoeeded from this excess of confidence." Ky. XXXVIII. Gaudio praedaque laeta. Cf. note, G. 7: cibos et hortamina.
He was possessed of great wealth in Jerusalem. Near him stand Martha my sister and Mantilla, the faithful servant who in happier days gathered olives on the hillsides of Bethany." "And you," asked Laeta Acilia, "you whose voice is so soft and whose face is so beautiful, what is your name?" The Jewess replied: "I am called Mary Magdalen.
She was saevo laeta negotio, like that fickle goddess Horace describes, and of whose "malicious joy" a great poet of our own has written so nobly who, famous and heroic as he was, was not strong enough to resist the torture of women.
He pronounced an eloquent eulogium on the noble charity of Laeta, the widow of the Emperor Gratian, who, with her mother, devoted the store of provisions obtained by their imperial revenues to succouring, at that important juncture, the starving and desponding poor: he admitted the new scarcity, consequent on the dissipation of Laeta's stores; deplored the present necessity of sacrificing the domestic animals of the citizens; condemned the enormous prices now demanded for the last remnants of wholesome food that were garnered up; announced it as the firm persuasion of every one that a few days more would bring help from Ravenna; and ended his address by informing his auditory that, as they had suffered so much already, they could patiently suffer a little more, and that if, after this, they were so ill-fated as to sink under their calamities, they would feel it a noble consolation to die in the cause of Catholic and Apostolic Rome, and would assuredly be canonised as saints and martyrs by the next generation of the pious in the first interval of fertile and restoring peace.
She does not seem to have followed her brother either to Milan or to Ravenna, for indeed his residence in both these cities was part of the great defence. She remained in Rome, probably in the house of her kinswoman Laeta, the widow of Gratian. That she had a grudge against Serena seems certain, though the whole story of the plot to marry her to Eucherius, Serena's son, would appear doubtful.
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