"Only slightly," answered Victoria. And addressing me she extended her hand affectionately, saying:
"Brother, you are with us! My heart overflows with joy!"
"But who gave you the wound?"
"The Frankish woman whom Ellen and Sampso brought to my house after your departure--"
"Elwig!" I cried horrified. "Oh! The accursed creature! She has approved herself worthy of her race!"
"Schanvoch," Victoria said to me gravely, "we must not curse the dead.
She whom you call Elwig lives no more--"
"Mother!" cried Victorin with increased anxiety. "Dear mother! Are you certain the wound is slight?"
"Here, my son; I shall let you see it!"
And in order to rea.s.sure Victorin, she unwound the bandage in which her right hand was wrapped.
"You can see for yourself," she added. "I cut myself only in two places in the palm of my hand as I sought to disarm the woman."
Indeed, the wounds that my foster-sister exhibited were two long but by no means deep cuts. They were in no respect serious.
"And Elwig was armed?" I inquired, seeking to recollect the events of the previous evening. "Where could she have found a weapon? Unless last evening, before starting to swim after us, she picked up her knife from the beach and hid it under her clothes."
"And how and when did the woman try to stab you, mother? Were you alone with her?"
"I asked Schanvoch to have Elwig brought to me at noon; I wanted to see her and give her my help. Ellen and Sampso brought her to me. I happened to be speaking with Robert, the chief of our reserves; we were considering measures for the defense of the camp and town in the event of our army"s defeat. Elwig was taken to a contiguous apartment, and Schanvoch"s wife and sister-in-law left the stranger alone while I sent for an interpreter to help us understand each other. At the close of my conversation with Robert on military matters, he asked me for some help for the widow of an old soldier. That took me to the chamber where Elwig was waiting for me. I went in for some silver pieces which I kept in a little casket in which were also several Gallic jewels, necklaces and bracelets that I inherited from my mother--"
"If the casket was open," I cried, the savage cupidity of Neroweg"s sister flashing through my mind, "Elwig, like the true daughter of a race of thieves, must have wished to seize some of the precious articles."
"And that was how it happened, Schanvoch. When I entered, the young Frankish woman was holding in her hand a gold necklace of exquisite workmanship. She was contemplating it greedily. The moment she saw me she dropped the necklace at her feet, and crossing her arms over her breast she looked at me for a moment in silence and with a savage expression. Her pale face became red with shame and rage. She then gave me a somber look, and p.r.o.nounced my name. I supposed she asked whether I was Victoria. I nodded my head affirmatively and said: "Yes, I am Victoria." I had hardly uttered the words when Elwig threw herself at my feet. Her forehead almost touched the floor, as if she humbly implored my protection. The woman must doubtlessly have profited by the movement to draw her knife from under her clothes without my perceiving it. I stooped down to raise her, when she suddenly leaped up, and with eyes that shot fire sought to stab me, while saying "Victoria!" "Victoria!"
in a tone of rooted hatred."
Although the danger was over, Victorin shuddered at the report that his mother was making; he approached her, gently took the wounded hand between his own, and kissed it tenderly and lovingly.
"When I saw Elwig"s knife raised over me," added Victoria, "my first and involuntary movement was to parry the blow and try to seize the knife, while I cried aloud to Robert for help. Robert rushed in and saw me struggling with Elwig. I was cut in the hand and my blood flowed. Robert believed me dangerously wounded, drew his sword, seized Elwig by the throat, and despatched her before I had time to stay his hand. I deplore the death of the Frankish woman--she came voluntarily to my house."
"You pity her, mother!" cried Victorin. "That creature thievish and savage like the rest of her kith! You pity her! I feel certain that she followed Schanvoch only in order to find an opportunity to introduce herself into your house, cut your throat and then rob you!"
"I pity her for being born of such a stock," answered Victoria sadly. "I pity her for having harbored murder in her heart."
"Believe me," I said to my foster-sister. "That woman"s death is a just punishment; besides it puts an end to a life that was soiled with crimes at which nature shudders. May it have pleased the G.o.ds that, like Elwig, her brother Neroweg lost his life to-day, and that his stock may be extinguished in him. I will otherwise regret all my life that I did not finish the man when I had a chance. I have a presentiment that his descendants will be fatal to mine."
Victoria gave me a look of astonishment at hearing me utter these words, the sense of which she could not comprehend.
But Victorin turned her thoughts and mine into other channels, exclaiming:
"Hesus be blessed, mother! This was a happy day for Gaul! You escaped a grave danger, and our arms are victorious! The Franks are driven from our frontier!--"
Victorin broke off; he seemed to listen to a sound in the distance; with flashing eyes he resumed:
"Do you hear, mother? Do you hear the song that the wind carries to our ears?"
We all remained silent; and repeated in chorus by thousands of voices tremulous with the joy of triumph, the following refrain reached us across the stillness of the night:
"This morning we said:-- "How many are there of these barbarians?"
This evening we say:-- "How many were there of these blood-thirsty Franks!""
PART II.
DOMESTIC TRAITORS.
CHAPTER I.
GATHERING SHADOWS.
Several years have elapsed since I wrote for you, my child, the account that closed with the great battle of the Rhine.
The utter annihilation of the Frankish hordes and the simultaneous destruction of their establishment on the other side of the river, freed Gaul of the perpetual fear that she stood in, of a threatened invasion of barbarians. Perhaps from their retreat in the woods of northern Germany the Franks are now only awaiting a favorable opportunity to swoop down again upon Gaul. But for all the joy of this deliverance, I now resume my narrative after having experienced years of bitter sorrow.
Great misfortunes have befallen me across this interval. I have seen a frightful intrigue of hypocrisy and malice unfold before my eyes. Since then an incurable sadness has taken possession of my soul. I left the borders of the Rhine for Brittany; here I established myself with your second mother and you, my son, at the identical place that long ago was the cradle of our family--near the sacred stones of Karnak, the witnesses of the heroic sacrifice of our ancestress Hena.
Only yesterday, as I was returning from the fields with you--from a soldier I have become a field laborer like our fathers in the days of their independence--only yesterday I pointed out to you, on the border of the stream, two hollow willow trees; they were old. Their age must now be more than three hundred years. They are so very, very old that they no longer put forth but a few straggling leaves. You asked me to tie a rope between the two trees for you to swing yourself. You noticed with surprise that I grew sad at your request, and that I suddenly became pensive.
It occurred to me how, nearly three hundred years ago, by a strange coincidence it occurred to Sylvest and his sister Syomara to tie a rope between those identical trees in order to disport themselves. Nor were, alas! those recollections the only ones that those two centenarian trunks brought back to my mind. I said to you:
"Look at those two trees with sadness and veneration, my son. One of our ancestors, Guilhern, the son of Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, died an atrocious death bound to one of them; Guilhern"s son, a lad a little older than yourself and named Sylvest, was tied to the other willow to die the same death as his father. An unexpected accident s.n.a.t.c.hed him from the frightful fate."[3]
"And what was their crime?" you asked me.
"The crime of the father and of his son was to have tried to escape from bondage, so as not to be forced to cultivate under a master"s whip, with the slave"s collar on their necks and chains to their feet, the fields that were their own patrimony. They wished to escape cultivating those fields for the benefit of the Romans who had robbed them of them."
My answer astonished you still more, my child--you who always lived happy and free, who until now have known no other grief than that of the loss of your dear mother, of whom you have preserved only a vague memory. You were barely four years and two months old a short time after the victory that Gaul won over the Franks on the border of the Rhine.
You will remember that I broke off our conversation, and that I relapsed into one of those fits of melancholy that I find it impossible to overcome every time I recall the terrible domestic catastrophes that befell us on the Rhine. But I always regain courage when I remember the duty imposed upon me by our ancestor Joel, who lived nearly three hundred years ago in the same place where we are now again established after our family"s having experienced innumerable vicissitudes.
When you will be old enough to read these pages, my son, you will understand the cause of these mortal fits of sadness in which you have often seen me steeped, despite your second mother"s tenderness, whom I could not cherish too dearly. Yes, when you will have read the last and solemn words of Victoria, the Mother of the Camps, dreadful words, you will then understand that, however painful may be to me the past that will throw a shadow over my path until death, the future that is perhaps in store for Gaul by the mysterious will of Hesus, must fill me with still greater anguish--and you will share my anguish, my son, when you reflect over the wise and profound observation of our ancestor Sylvest:
"Alas, every time the nation is wounded the family bleeds."
Aye, if Victoria was endowed with the science of foreseeing the future, as so many of our venerable female druids have been before her; if ever her redoubtable prophecies are verified--then, woe is Gaul! Woe is our race! Woe is our family! A longer period of even more cruel sufferings will lie before our country under the yoke of the Rome of the Bishops than it experienced under the yoke of the Rome of the Caesars and the Emperors!