"Your wife is a woman of manful virtue," said the interpreter to Albinik. "Behold those treasures at her feet; she has spurned them.
Great Caesar"s love she has scorned. He pretended to resort to violence. Your companion, disarmed by a trick, was prepared to take her own life. Thus gloriously has she come out of the test."
"The test?" answered Albinik, with an air of sinister doubt. "The test?
Who, here, has the right to test the virtue of my wife?"
"The thought of vengeance, which have brought you into the Roman camp, are the thoughts of a haughty soul, roused by injustice and barbarity.
The mutilation which you have suffered seemed above all to prove the truth of your words," resumed the interpreter. "But fugitives always arouse a secret suspicion. The wife often is a test of the husband.
Yours is a valiant wife. To inspire such fidelity, you must be a man of courage and of truth. That is what we wished to make sure of."
"I don"t know," began the mariner doubtfully, "the licentiousness of your general is well known----"
"The G.o.ds have sent us in you a precious aid; you can become fatal to the Gauls. Do you believe Caesar is foolish enough to wish to make an enemy of you by outraging your wife, at the very moment, perhaps, when he is about to charge you with a mission of trust? No, I repeat: he wished to try you both, and so far the trials are favorable to you."
Caesar interrupted the interpreter, saying a few words to him. Then bowing respectfully to Meroe, and saluting Albinik with a friendly gesture, he slowly and majestically left the tent.
"You and your wife," said the interpreter, "are henceforth a.s.sured of the general"s protection. He gives you his word for it. You shall no more be separated or disturbed. The wife of the courageous mariner has scorned these rich ornaments," added the interpreter, collecting the jewels and replacing them in the casket. "Caesar wishes to keep as a reminder of Gallic virtue the poniard which she wore, and which he took from her by ruse. Rea.s.sure yourself, she shall not remain unarmed."
Almost at the same instant, two young freedmen entered the tent. They carried on a large silver tray a little oriental dagger of rich workmanship, and a Spanish saber, short and slightly curved, hung from a baldric of red leather, magnificently embroidered in gold. The interpreter presented the dagger to Meroe and the saber to Albinik, saying to them as he did so:
"Sleep in peace, and guard these gifts of the grandeur of Caesar."
"And do you a.s.sure him," returned Albinik, "that your words and his generosity dissipate my suspicions. Henceforth he will have no more devoted allies than my wife and myself, until our vengeance be satisfied."
The interpreter left, taking with him the two freedmen. Albinik then told his wife that when he had been taken into the Roman general"s tent, he had waited for Caesar, in company with the interpreter, up to the moment when they both returned to the tent, under the conduct of a slave. Meroe told in turn what had occurred to her. The couple concluded that Caesar, half drunk, had at first yielded to a foul thought, but that Meroe"s desperate resolve, backed up by the reflection that he was running the risk of estranging a fugitive from whom he might reap good service, had curbed the Roman"s pa.s.sion. With his habitual trickery and address, he had given, under the pretext of a "trial," an almost generous appearance to the odious attempt.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRIAL.
The next morning Caesar, accompanied by his generals, set out for the bank which commanded the mouth of the Loire, where a tent had been set up for him. From this place the sea and its dangerous sh.o.r.es, strewn with sand-bars and rocks level with the water, could be seen in the distance. The wind was blowing a gale. Moored to the bank was a fisherman"s boat, at once solid and light, rigged Gallic fashion, with one square sail with flaps cut in its lower edge. To this craft Albinik and Meroe were forthwith conducted.
"It is stormy, the sea is menacing," said the interpreter to them. "Will you dare to venture it alone with your wife? There are some fishermen here who have been taken prisoners--do you want their help?"
"My wife and I have before now braved tempests alone in our boat, when we made for my ship, anch.o.r.ed far out from sh.o.r.e on account of bad weather."
"But now you are maimed," answered the interpreter. "How will you be able to manage!"
"One hand is enough for the tiller. My companion will raise the sail--the woman"s business, since it is a sort of cloth," gaily added the mariner to give the Romans faith in him.
"Go ahead then," said the interpreter. "May the G.o.ds direct you."
The bark, pushed into the waves by several soldiers, rocked a minute under the flappings of the sail, which had not yet caught the wind. But soon, held by Meroe, while her husband managed the tiller, the sail filled, and bellied out to the blast. The boat leaned gently, and seemed to fly over the crests of the waves like a sea-bird. Meroe, dressed in her mariner"s costume, stayed at the prow, her black hair streaming in the wind. Occasionally the white foam of the ocean, bursting from the prow of the boat, flung its stinging froth in the young woman"s n.o.ble face. Albinik knew these coasts as the ferryman of the solitary moors of Brittany knows their least detours. The bark seemed to play with the high waves. From time to time the couple saw in the distance the tent of Caesar, recognizable by its purple flaps, and saw gleaming in the sun the gold and silver which decked the armor of his generals.
"Oh, Caesar!--scourge of Gaul--the most cruel, the most debauched of men!" exclaimed Meroe. "You do not know that this frail bark, which at this moment you are following in the distance with your eyes, bears two of your most desperate enemies. You do not know that they have beforehand given over their lives to Hesus in the hope of making to Teutates, G.o.d of journeys by land and by sea, an offering worthy of him--an offering of several thousand Romans, sinking in the depths of the sea. It is with hands raised to you, thankful and happy, O, Hesus, that we shall disappear in the bottom of the deep, with the enemies of our sacred Gaul!"
The bark of Albinik and Meroe, almost grazing the rocks and glancing over the surges along the dangerous ash.o.r.e, sometimes drew away from, sometimes approached the bank. The mariner"s companion, seeing him sad and thoughtful, said:
"Still brooding, Albinik! Everything favors our projects. The Roman general is no longer suspicious; your skill this morning will decide him to accept your services; and to-morrow, mayhap, you will pilot the galleys of our enemies----"
"Yes, I will pilot them to the bottom, where they will be swallowed up, and we with them."
"What a magnificent offering to the G.o.ds! Ten thousand Romans, perhaps!"
"Meroe," answered Albinik with a sigh, "then, after ending our lives here, even as the soldiers, brave warriors after all, we shall be resurrected elsewhere with them. They will say to me: "It was not through bravery, with the lance and the sword, that you overcame us. No, you slew us without a combat, by treason. You watched at the rudder, we slept in peace and confidence. You steered us on the rocks--in an instant the sea swallowed us. You are like a cowardly poisoner, who would send us to our death by putting poison in our food. Is that an act of valor? No, no longer do you know the open boldness of your fathers, those proud Gauls who fought us half naked, who railed at us in our iron armor, asking why we fought if we were afraid of wounds or death.""
"Ah!" exclaimed Meroe, sadly and bitterly, "Why did the druidesses teach me that a woman ought to escape the last outrage by death! Why did your mother Margarid tell us so often, as a n.o.ble example to follow, the deed of your grandmother Syomara, who cut off the head of the Roman who ravished her, and carrying the head under the skirt of her robe to her husband, said to him these proud and chaste words: "No two men living can boast of having possessed me!" Why did I not yield to Caesar?"
"Meroe!"
"Perhaps you would then have been avenged! faint heart! weak spirit!
Must then the outrage be completed, the ignominy swallowed, before your anger is kindled?"
"Meroe, Meroe!"
"It is not enough for you, then, that the Roman has proposed to your wife to sell herself, to deliver herself to him for gifts? It is to your wife--do you hear!--to your wife, that Caesar made that offer of shame!"
"You speak true," answered the mariner, feeling anger fire his heart at the memory of these outrages, "I was a spiritless fellow----"
But his companion went on with redoubled bitterness:
"No, I see it now. This is not enough. I should have died. Then perhaps you would have sworn vengeance over my body. Oh, they arouse pity in you, these Romans, of whom we wish to make an offering to the G.o.ds! They are not accomplices to the crime which Caesar attempted, say you?
Answer! Would they have come to my aid, these soldiers, these brave warriors, if, instead of relying on my own courage and drawing my strength from my love for you, I had cried, implored, supplicated, "Romans, in the name of your mothers, defend me from the l.u.s.t of your general"? Answer! Would they have come at my call? Would they have forgotten that I was a Gaul--that Caesar was Caesar? Would the "generous hearts" of these brave fellows have revolted? After rape, do not they themselves drown the infants in the blood of their mothers?----"
Albinik did not allow his companion to finish. He blushed at his lack of heart. He blushed at having an instant forgotten the horrible deeds perpetrated by the Romans in their impious war. He blushed at having forgotten that the sacrifice of the enemies of Gaul was above all else pleasing to Hesus. In his anger, he rang out, for answer, the war song of the Breton seamen, as if the wind could carry his words of defiance and death to Caesar where he stood on the bank:
Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn![4]
As I was lying in my vessel I heard The sea-eagle calling, in the dead of night.
He called his eaglets and all the birds of the sh.o.r.e.
He said to them as he called: "Arise ye, all--come--come.
It is no longer the putrid flesh of the dog or sheep we must have-- It is Roman flesh."
"Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn!
Old sea-raven, tell me, what have you there?
The head of the Roman leader I clutch; I want his eyes--his two red eyes!"
And you, sea-wolf, what have you there?
"The heart of the Roman leader I hold-- I am devouring it."
And you, sea-serpent, what are you doing there, Coiled "round that neck, your flat head so close To that mouth, already cold and blue?
"To hear the soul of the Roman leader Take its departure am I here!"
Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn!"
Stirred up, like her husband, by the song of war, Meroe repeated with him, seeming to defy Caesar, whose tent they discerned in the distance:
"Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn!"