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"Oh!" broke forth Timokles earnestly, "I know a death that was a glorious victory! Carthage knew of it! Didst thou not hear what was done last year at Carthage? Didst thou not know of the Christian lady, Vivia Perpetua, and the Christian slave, Felicitas?" A shudder ran through Pentaur, as Timokles continued: "Thinkest thou that what they suffered was nothing?
But because the Prince of Felicitas had so commanded him, he continued nightly to pass with his lanthorn up and down the street; and every morning as the saffron swan came swimming overhead, to fall asleep.
Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin face, like a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin grey hairs flutter in the draught of the bats' wings circling round the light. "'Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an' my lanthorn's nowt but a poor thing." With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the old man's forehead.
Once upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had occasion to set forth on a journey. It was a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a moon no larger than the paring of a finger-nail. And as he rode through the purlieus of his city, the white mane of his amber-coloured steed was all that he could clearly see in the dusk of the high streets.
Now it came to pass that the Prince of Felicitas, returning from his journey, rode once more on his amber-coloured steed down the Vita Publica. The night was dark as a rook's wing, but far away down the street burned a little light, like a red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding by descried it for a lanthorn, with an old man sleeping beside it. "How is this, Friend?" said the Prince.
Since it hath pleased the Almighty God, out of his infinite mercy, so to make us happy, by restoring of our native King to us, and us unto our native liberty through him, that now the good may say, magna temporum felicitas ubi sentire quoe velis, et dicere licet quoe sentias, we cannot but esteem ourselves engaged in the highest of degrees, to render unto him the highest thanks we can express.
He was seen also at the laying of the foundation stone of the church of the Jesuits, at the transfer of the relics of the holy martyrs Flavian and Felicitas, at the consecration of the cathedral of Quebec and at that of the chief altar of the church of the Ursulines, in fact, everywhere where he might set before the faithful the good example of piety and of the respect due to religion.
Each succeeding emperor was saluted with the wish that he might be "better than Trajan and more fortunate than Augustus." Yet the breach made in Trajan's felicitas by the failure in the East was no greater than that made in the felicitas of Augustus by his retirement from the right bank of the Rhine.
The Virgins that follow the Lamb, Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha and the rest step forward smiling, and take their part; the Eternal Father is invoked again in the Son's own words; and at length the King, descending yet one further step of infinite humility, flings back the last vesture of His outward Royalty and casts Himself in a passion of haste and desire into the still and invisible depths of these two quivering hearts, made in His own Image, that lift themselves in an agony of love to meet Him....
All the world knows the history of the celebrated saints Perpetua and Felicity, whose beatifications have no other foundation than the words perpetua felicitas, so very common on the monuments of that nation.
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