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Sunday, August 15, 2010 - 6:02 PM
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire had no means of escape but in the swiftness of the
horses which bore him and his wife away. Pregnant as she was, she endured,
somehow or other, out of fear of the enemy and love of her husband, the
first part of the flight, but after a while, when she felt herself shaken
by its continuous speed, she implored to be rescued by an honourable death
from the shame of captivity. He at first embraced, cheered, and encouraged
her, now admiring her heroism, now filled with a sickening apprehension
at the idea of her being left to any man's mercy. Finally, urged by the
intensity of his love and familiarity with dreadful deeds, he unsheathed
his scymitar, and having stabbed her, dragged her to the bank of the Araxes
and committed her to the stream, so that her very body might be swept away.
Then in headlong flight he hurried to Iberia, his ancestral kingdom. Zenobia
meanwhile (this was her name), as she yet breathed and showed signs of
life on the calm water at the river's edge, was perceived by some shepherds,
who inferring from her noble appearance that she was no base-born woman,
bound up her wound and applied to it their rustic remedies. As soon as
they knew her name and her adventure, they conveyed her to the city of
Artaxata, whence she was conducted at the public charge to Tiridates, who
received her kindly and treated her as a royal person.
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