and said with an oath to the bystanders:
'I saw verily, as they were slain,
God's angels, shining in the likeness of the sun,
flying to them, and they received their souls;
and I saw the souls, very beautiful, go
forth with the angels on their wings to heaven.'
While Maximus spake so surely these words
with weeping eyes, many of the heathen turned
to the true faith from their false gods.
When Almachius learnt that the venerable Maximus
with all his house believed in the Saviour,
and were baptized, then he became angry,
and bade men scourge him with leaden whips
until he departed from the world to Christ.
Then anon Caecilia buried the saint
in a stone coffin in the place where lay
the two brothers who were buried before.
Then afterward she secretly dealt to the poor
her bridegroom's possessions and his brother's things;
and Almachius desired to know about the goods
as she was a widow, and she was then brought by compulsion
that she might sacrifice to the wicked gods.
Then wept the heathen that a maiden so beautiful
and a woman so nobly born, filled with wisdom,
should suffer death in torments, so young.
Then spake Caecilia and said to them all:
'he is not forlorn who lieth slain for God;
he shall be thus changed from death to glory,
as if a man should give away loam and himself get gold,
as if he should give a mean house and receive a glorious one;
give the perishable and receive the imperishable;
give a mean stone and receive a precious gem.'
She long thus exhorted the unbelieving heathen
until they all spake thus with one voice;
