Then verily the fame spread over all the household, and they all wondered together, and rejoiced for their meeting, and that much the more blithely because they had overcome the heathen. Then the next day they made a very great feast, and thanked God for His great mercy. After they had subdued all their enemies' land, and they, with great victory, had returned home, and carried with them great plunder and many captives, then it happened that the Emperor Trajan was dead before Eustace came from the fight, and there was appointed another king, called Adrian, who was heathen, and worse in ferocity. "When Eustace came again from the fight, then went the emperor to meet him, as is the custom with the Romans, and proclaimed a great solemnity for the victory which he had gained, and asked him about the fight and about his wife and his sons, how he had heard of them. Then the next day the emperor went to the temple of the idols, and Eustace would not go in with him, but stood there outside. Then the emperor called him, and asked why he would not offer sacrifice to the gods for his victory, and especially because he had found his wife and his children.
Then said he, ' I worship and pray to my Lord Jesus Christ; unceasingly I offer supplications to Him, "Who had pity on my lowliness and brought me from captivity, and gave me back my wife and my children; verily I know no other God, nor worship any save the Heavenly God, Who created all creatures, both the heavenly and the earthly, and worketh many wonders.'
Then the emperor became filled with great rage, and commanded men to ungird and disarm him, and that he should stand up before his face with his wife and his children as being a transgressor of his lord's commands; and he, however, in no wise would turn from his faith and the true God. When the emperor saw that he could by no means turn him from Christ's Faith, then he commanded him to be led with his wife and his children into a den, and bade a strong lioness to be let in to them, that she should devour them. Then ran the lioness, and stood by the blessed man Eustace, and bowed down her head, and fell at his feet, and humbled herself to him, and arose again, and went out of the
