These last words wholly exhausted Victoria's strength. Still she made one more effort in her divine exaltation. She raised her eyes to heaven, crossed her arms over her breast, heaved a long sigh, and fell back upon her couch.
The Mother of the Camps, Victoria the Great, was dead!
While she spoke I made superhuman efforts to control my despair. When, however, I saw her expire, I became dizzy, my knees sank under me, my strength, my thoughts fled. I lost consciousness, but I still recollect the sound of many voices and a great tumult in the contiguous apartment whence I heard distinctly the words:
"Tetrik, the Chief of Gaul, is in his death agony—he is dying of poison—"
For several days I lay at death's door, constantly attended, my son, by your second mother. About two weeks passed after the death of Victoria, before I was able to collect and co-ordinate my recollections, and speak with Sampso of our irreparable loss. The last words that struck my ears when, broken with grief, I wholly lost consciousness beside the death-bed of my foster-sister were these:
"Tetrik, the Chief of Gaul, is in his death agony—he is dying of poison."
Indeed Tetrik was, or rather seemed to have been, poisoned at the same time as Victoria. He had hardly stepped into the house of the general of the army, when he seemed seized with severe pangs. When two weeks later I myself returned to life, the life of Tetrik was still despaired of.
I must admit I was stupefied at the strange information; my reason refused to believe the man guilty of a crime of which he was himself a victim.
Victoria's death threw the city of Treves, the army, and later the whole nation into consternation. The funeral of the august Mother of the Camps seemed to be the funeral of Gaul herself. In her sudden taking-off people saw the presage of new evils to the country. The Gallic senate decreed the apotheosis of Victoria. It was celebrated at Treves in the midst of universal sorrow and tears. The pompous solemnity of the druid cult, the chant of the bards, imparted imposing splendor to the ceremony. Embalmed and lying on an ivory couch covered with cloth of gold, Victoria lay in state to the veneration of the citizens who crowded in mass to the house of mourning. The place was constantly invaded by that army of the Rhine of which Victoria was truly the mother. Finally her remains were placed upon the pyre, agreeable to the custom of our fathers. Incense rose along the streets of Treves, crossed by the funeral procession, which was headed by the bards singing on their golden harps the praises of the illustrious woman. The pyre was then set on fire and disappeared in a sheet of flame.
A medal, struck on the very day of the funeral ceremony, represents, on its obverse, the head of the Gallic heroine, casqued as Minerva, and on its reverse, an eagle with outstretched wings flying into space with its eyes fixed upon the sun, the symbol of the druid faith—the soul leaving this world and flying towards the unknown world where it is to be clad in a new body. Under the symbol the ordinary formula was engraved: "Consecration," followed below by these words:
Victoria, Emperor.
By that virile appellation Gaul immortalized in her enthusiasm the glorious Mother of the Camps, and wreathed her memory in a title that she had steadily declined during life—a life that was at once modest and sublime, and wholly consecrated to her father, her husband, her son and to the glory and welfare of her country.
My perplexity was profound. The poisoning of Tetrik, who, as it was claimed, still struggled with death, the disappearance of the parchments that contained the traitor's conversation with Victoria, and which she was thereby prevented from signing before dying—all these circumstances rendered the prosecution of the traitor difficult, if not impossible. An accusation lodged by me, an obscure soldier, against Tetrik, who survived as the supreme Chief of Gaul, and whose power was now all the greater, seeing it was no longer counterbalanced by the vast influence of the Mother of the Camps, could not lead to favorable results. Before deciding upon a final course in the matter, I waited for my shattered frame and mind to recover their former vigor.
Three days after Victoria's death, and obedient to the last wishes of the Mother of the Camps, Sampso opened the casket that Victoria gave her. In it my wife found a last touching proof of the thoughtfulness of my foster-sister. There was a parchment with these words inscribed in her own hand:
"We shall never part until death," did we, my good brother Schanvoch, often say to each other; it is your wish, it is mine; but if I am called away before you to live in the unknown worlds, where we shall one day meet again, I shall feel happy on the day when we shall meet again elsewhere than here, at the thought that you have gone back to Brittany, the cradle of your family.
The Roman conquest plundered your family of its ancestral fields. Free once more, Gaul should, in the name of right or by force, have revanquished the heritage of your children from the descendants of the Romans. I know not what will be our country's condition, at the time of our separation. But, hap what hap may, there are three means by which you will be able to revindicate your just heritage—right, money or force. You have the right, you have the force, you have the money—you will find in this casket the sufficient sum with which to buy back, if need be, the fields that belonged to your family, and thenceforth live happy and free near the sacred stones of Karnak, the witnesses of the heroic death of your ancestress Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen.
You have often shown to me the pious relics of your family—I wish to join to them a souvenir of my own. You will find in this casket a bronze lark. I wore that ornament on my casque the day of the battle of Riffenel, at which I saw my son Victorin flash his virgin sword. I wish that you and your family may continue to keep this memento of our fraternal friendship. It is left to you by your foster-sister Victoria; she is of your family—did she not drink the milk of your brave mother?
When you read these lines, my good brother Schanvoch, I shall have been re-born beyond, near those whom I have loved.
Persevere in your fidelity to Gaul and the faith of our fathers. You have approved yourself worthy of your family. May your descendants approve themselves worthy of you, and write, without having to blush, the history of their lives, as Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, has desired them to do.
Victoria.
Need I tell you, my son, how deeply I was moved by such solicitude on her part? I was at the time steeped in gloom and absorbed by the fear of the grave events that might follow in the wake of Victoria's death. I remained almost insensible to the hope of speedily returning to Brittany, in order to end my days there, on the spot where my ancestors lived. When my health was completely restored, I repaired to the general who commanded the army of the Rhine. An old soldier himself, he was certain to appreciate better than anyone else the serious dangers that Gaul remained exposed to with Victoria's death. I frankly told him the schemes that Tetrik was hatching; I also expressed to him my suspicions regarding the poisoning of my foster-sister. The general made me the following answer:
"The crimes and plots that you accuse Tetrik of are so monstrous, they would bespeak so infernal a soul, that I would hardly believe them, even if they were attested by Victoria herself, our august mother, whom we can never forget. Schanvoch, you are a brave and honest soldier, but your deposition will not suffice to bring the Chief of Gaul to the bar of the senate and the army. Besides, Tetrik is himself about to die; even his own poisoning proves to a certainty that he is innocent of Victoria's death. You would be the only witness against the Chief of Gaul, who has been loved and venerated up to now, seeing that he has always conducted himself as the first subject of Victoria, the real empress of the nation. Take my advice, Schanvoch, invigorate your spirit, that the sudden death of this august woman has so severely shaken. It may be that, shocked by the disaster, your judgment is led astray, and mistakes vague apprehensions for facts. Until now, Tetrik has governed Gaul wisely, thanks to the inspiration of our august Mother. If he dies, he will be regretted by us; if he survives the mysterious crime which he has himself narrowly escaped, we shall continue to honor the man who was pointed out to us by Victoria herself as the fit object of our choice."
The general's answer proved to me that I would never succeed in causing the senate and the army to share my suspicions and convictions, both being so thoroughly prejudiced in favor of the Chief of Gaul.
Tetrik did not die. Hearing of his father's predicament, his son hurried to Treves, and took his father in charge. When he became convalescent, Tetrik held lengthy interviews with the senators and the chiefs of the army. He manifested on the subject of Victoria's death so profound and, to all appearance, sincere a grief; he honored her memory in so pious a manner by a funeral ceremony at which he glorified the illustrious woman, whose omnipotent hand, he said, had so long supported him, and to whom he felt proud of owing his elevation; in short, he seemed so heart-stricken when, pale, worn with his illness, frequently breaking out into tears, and leaning on the arm of his son, he dragged himself with unsteady step to the sad solemnity, that he conquered the affection of the people and the army more completely than ever by the last homage that he rendered to the memory of Victoria.
I then realized how utterly futile it would be to press my accusations against Tetrik. With my heart rent at seeing the fate of Gaul in the hands of a man whom I knew for a traitor, I decided to leave Treves with you, my son, and Sampso, your second mother, and repair to Brittany, the country of our family's nativity, there to seek some consolation for my sorrows.
Nevertheless I felt bound to fulfil what I considered a sacred duty. By dint of constantly interrogating my memory on the subject of the conversation between Tetrik and Victoria, I succeeded in transcribing it a second time, word for word. Of this I made a second copy, and on the eve of my departure took the first draft to the general of the army.
"You are of the opinion," I said to him, "that my reason wanders—keep this narrative—I hope the future may not prove to you the truth of my accusation."
The general took the parchment, and dismissed me with the compassionate mien that is bestowed upon people whose mind is deranged.
On leaving the general of the army I walked home disconsolate. Crime was triumphant. I returned home, to the house of my foster-sister, where I remained until my departure for Brittany. I was engaged with Sampso packing up the last articles needed on our journey, when the following unlooked-for events happened on that night.
Mora, the servant, had also remained in the house. The woman's grief at her mistress's death touched my heart. On the night that I am writing about, my son, while engaged with your second mother in the preparations for our journey, we found that we needed another trunk. I went downstairs in search of one into a room that was separated from Mora's chamber by a rough wooden partition. It was past midnight. Upon entering the room where the trunk was, I noticed, to my no slight astonishment, that a bright light shone from the servant's room through the clefts of the partition. Fearing that the woman's bed might have taken fire while she slept, I hastened to peep through the clefts in the boards. I bounded back with astonishment, but quickly returned to my place of observation.
Mora was contemplating herself in a little silver mirror by the light of two lamps, the gleam of which had first attracted my attention. But it was no longer Mora the Mauritanian; at least, her bronze complexion had disappeared! I now saw her a pale brunette, coiffed in a rich gold band ornamented with precious stones. The woman smiled at herself in the glass. She put a long pearl earring to one of her ears, and—strangest of all—she wore a corsage of some silvery material and a scarlet skirt.
I recognized Kidda, the Bohemian girl.
Alas! I had seen the creature only once, and then only by the light of the moon, on that fateful night, when, suddenly recalled to Mayence by the mysterious notification given me by my traveling companion, I slew Victorin in my house, together with my beloved wife Ellen.
Rage followed close upon the heels of my stupor—a horrible suspicion flashed through my mind. I bolted from the inside the room in which I was; with a violent thrust of my shoulder—rage multiplied my strength a hundredfold—I broke down one of the boards of the partition, and suddenly I stood before the eyes of the startled Bohemian. With one hand I seized her and threw her upon her knees, with the other I took one of the two heavy iron lamps, and raising it over the woman's head I cried:
"I shall shatter your skull if you do not immediately confess your crimes!"
Kidda believed she read the decree of her death in my face. She grew livid and murmured:
"Kill me not! I shall speak!"
"You are Kidda, the Bohemian girl?"
"Yes—I am Kidda."
"You were formerly at Mayence—and, as the price of your favors, you exacted of Victorin that he dishonor my wife Ellen?"
"Yes—that is so!"
"You were acting under orders of Tetrik?"
"No, I never spoke to him."
"Whose orders were you, then, following?"
"Of Tetrik's equerry."
"The man is cautious," I thought to myself. "And the soldier who on that fateful night announced to me that a heinous crime was being perpetrated in my house—do you know who he was?"
"It was Captain Marion's companion in arms, he was a former blacksmith, like Marion."
"Did Tetrik also know that soldier?"
"No, it was Tetrik's equerry who had secret conferences with him at Mayence."
"And where is that soldier now?"
"He died."
"After Tetrik employed him to assassinate Captain Marion?"
The girl looked puzzled.
"Did Tetrik cause him to be put to death? Answer!"
"I think so!"
"And it is that same equerry who sent you to this house under the guise of Mora, the Mauritanian? Was it in order to disguise yourself that you painted your face?"
"Yes—that is all so."
"You were to spy upon your mistress, were you not?—and then poison her? Speak! If you believe in a God—if your infernal soul dares at this supreme moment to implore his help—you have but a minute to live—Speak!"
"Confess your crime—you committed it under orders of Tetrik? Speak!"
"Yes, I was ordered by Tetrik."
"When—how did he give you the order to execute that crime?"
"When I entered the room the second time—after I was sent to bring Captain Paul, who was to arrest Tetrik."
"And the poison—you poured it into the drink that you were to present to your mistress?"
"Yes—it happened that way."
"And on that same day," I added, my recollections now thronging to my mind, "when I sent you to my wife, you purloined a parchment that lay on my table and that I had written upon?"
"Yes, Tetrik ordered me to—he heard Victoria refer to the parchment."
"Why, after the crime was committed, did you stay in this house down to to-day?"
"So as to awaken no suspicions."
"What induced you to poison your mistress?"
"The gift of these jewels that I was entertaining myself with putting on when you broke in upon me. I thought I was alone!"
"Tetrik came himself near dying of the poison—do you believe his equerry is guilty of that crime?"
"Every poison has its counter-poison," answered the Bohemian with a sinister smile. "He who poisons others, removes suspicion from himself by drinking from the same cup, and he is safe through the counter-poison."
The woman's answer was a flash-light to me. By an infernal ruse, and doubtlessly guaranteed against death, thanks to an antidote, Tetrik had swallowed enough poison to produce in him the identical symptoms that marked Victoria's agony and thus seem to share her fate.
To seize a scarf that lay upon the bed, and, despite the resistance that she offered, to tie her hands firmly together and to lock her up in one of the lower rooms, was the affair of but an instant. I ran back to the general of the army. After finally succeeding in being admitted to his presence—a difficult thing owing to the hour of the night—I repeated to him the confession that Kidda had just made to me. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently and said:
"Ever this same, rooted, thought—your mind must be wholly deranged. The idea of having me waked up to hear such crazy man's stories. Moreover, you have chosen ill the hour to prefer such charges against the venerable Tetrik. He left Treves last evening for Bordeaux."
The departure of Tetrik was a heavy blow to my last hopes. Nevertheless, I pressed the general with such insistence, I spoke to him with such earnestness and coherence, that he consented to order one of his officers to accompany me back to the house, and take the Bohemian girl's confession in writing. He and I returned hurriedly to the house. I opened the door of the chamber in which I had left Kidda with her hands tied. She was gone! She must have gnawed at the scarf with her teeth, and fled by one of the windows that now stood open and that looked into the garden. In my hurry and the seething confusion of my brain I had omitted to guard against the chances of the woman's escape by that issue.
"Poor Schanvoch!" said the officer to me with deep pity. "Your grief makes you see visions—be careful, or you will go crazy, altogether!"
And without caring to listen to me any longer he left.
The will of God be done! I now renounced all hope of uncovering the crimes of Tetrik. The next day I left the city of Treves with you and Sampso, and took the road for Brittany.
You will read, alas! with no little grief and apprehension, my son, the few lines with which I shall close this narrative. You will see how our old Gaul, after having fully reacquired her freedom by dint of three centuries of continuous struggle, after having become great and powerful under the influence of Victoria, was again to fall, not, it is true, completely under the yoke, but at least enfeoffed to the Roman Emperors through the infamous treachery of Tetrik.
Finding his projects of marriage and usurpation thwarted by the Mother of the Camps, the monster had her poisoned. She alone, had she consented to abjure her faith and contract a union with him, could have cleared the path for him to reach the hereditary throne of Gaul. With Victoria dead, he realized the futility of persevering along that route. Moreover, he soon felt that, being no longer sustained by the wisdom and sovereign influence of that august woman, the people's affection for him was visibly ebbing. Seeing that with every day he lost some of his former prestige, and foreseeing his speedy fall, he began to cast about for the commission of one of the two acts of treason that I had long ago suspected him of contemplating. He labored in the dark to reduce Gaul, after the country had acquired its complete independence, back to the level of a dependency of the Roman Emperors. Long in advance, and by means of a thousand and one covert schemes, he sowed the germs of civil discord in the country. By these means Gaul's powers of resistance were weakened. He succeeded in re-kindling the old jealousies between province and province that had long been allayed. By means of deliberately practiced acts of favoritism and of injustice, he incited violent rivalries between the generals and also between the several army corps. When matters were ripe for the deed of treason he secretly wrote to Aurelian, the Roman Emperor:
"The favorable moment for an attack upon Gaul has arrived. You will prevail easily over a people that is weakened by internal dissensions, and an army, one division of which is jealous of the other. I shall notify you in advance of how the Gallic troops are distributed, and also of their moves, in order to insure the prospects of your triumph."
The two armies met on the banks of the Marne on the wide plain of Chalon. Agreeable to his promise, and acting in concert with the Roman general, Tetrik allowed the corps that he led to be cut off from the rest of the army. The Gallic legions of the Rhine fought with their wonted intrepidity, but it was of no avail. Their movements being known in advance by the enemy and overpowered by numbers, they were finally cut to pieces. Tetrik and his son took refuge in the enemy's camp. Our army being out of the way, and our country divided against itself, as it had never been before even during the darkest days of our history, victory was rendered an easy matter to the Romans. After re-enjoying absolute freedom for many a year, Gaul became a Roman province once more. As Caesar had done before him, in order to glorify the great event, the Emperor Aurelian made a solemn entry into the Roman capital. All the captives, gathered by that emperor in the course of his long wars in Asia, marched before his chariot. Among these the queen of the Orient was seen, the heroine who emulated Victoria—Zenobia. She was loaded with golden chains riveted to the gold collar that she wore around her neck. Behind Zenobia marched Tetrik, the last Chief of Gaul before the country relapsed into a province of Rome. Tetrik and his son marched free and with heads erect, despite their infamous treachery. They wore long purple mantles over silk tunics and breeches. They represented in the procession the recent submission of the Gauls to Aurelian the Emperor.
Alas! my son, the history of our fathers will teach you that one day, three hundred years ago, another Gaul also marched before the triumphal chariot of a Roman Emperor, Caesar. That Gaul did not march in brilliant array, with audacious mien and with smiles for his vanquisher. That captive was loaded with chains, he was clad in rags, and was hardly able to walk; he was that day taken out of the dungeon where he had languished four years after having defended the freedom of Gaul inch by inch against the victorious armies of the great Caesar. That captive, one of the most heroic martyrs of our country and our independence, was called Vercingetorix, the Chief of the Hundred Valleys.
After the triumphal march of Caesar, the head of the valiant defender of Gaul was cut off.
After the triumphal march of Aurelian, Tetrik, the renegade who delivered his country to the foreigner, was led with pomp to a splendid palace, the price of his sacrilegious treason.
Let not the contrast cause you to despair of virtue, my son. The justice of Hesus is eternal. Traitors will receive their punishment.
The narrative of my father Amael's great-grandfather Schanvoch on the events that transpired in Gaul—after the death of Victoria the Great, during the time that, living retiredly in Brittany on the fields of our ancestors that he bought back from a Roman colonist, he quietly spent his life with his son Alguen and his second wife Sampso—ends here.
While it is true that Gaul was again a province of Rome, nevertheless, all the practical franchises, that we reconquered so dearly by innumerable insurrections, and paid for with the blood of our fathers, have remained to us. None has dared, none will dare to deprive us of them. We shall preserve our laws and customs; we shall enjoy our full rights as citizens. Our incorporation with the Empire, the impost that we pay into the fisc, and our name of "Roman Gaul"—these are the only evidences of our dependence. Such a chain may not be heavy; but, light as it be, a chain it is. I doubt not that some day we shall be able to break it. The apprehensions that weighed upon my great-great-grandfather Schanvoch's mind and that continue to weigh upon mine do not arise from that quarter. No! The dangers that we apprehend—if faith is to be attached to the prediction made by Victoria upon her death-bed; the danger, that has filled us with dread for the future, rises from the once more swelling number of the Frankish hordes on the other side of the Rhine, and in the dark machinations of the bishops of the new religion.
My great-great-grandfather Schanvoch died peaceably in our house, situated near the sacred stones of Karnak. He left the narrative that he wrote, and the casque's lark, given him by Victoria, together with the previous narratives of our family and the relics that accompany them, to his son Alguen. After a long and peaceful life Alguen died, three hundred and forty years after our ancestress Genevieve saw Jesus of Nazareth perish on the cross. Alguen's son Roderik, my grandfather, inherited from his father both our family records and relics, and a quiet, peaceful and contented life, all of which he bequeathed to his son, my father Amael, who in turn bequeathed them to me, Gildas.
I then, Gildas, make this entry to-day in our family annals three hundred and seventy-five years after the death of Jesus. I feel sad on this occasion. My father had intended to add a few words to our family annals. He postponed doing so from day to day, seeing there was nothing that he desired to make particular mention of to our descendants, his life being the uneventful one of a quiet, industrious and obscure husbandman. Two days ago my father died. He died in our own house, near the stones of Karnak, after a short illness.
The frightful predictions of Victoria, the illustrious foster-sister of my ancestor Schanvoch, have not been verified. May they never be! Gaul continues a dependence of the Roman Emperors. Occasionally a traveler reaches these parts, penetrating into these remote regions of our old Armorica. From them we have learned that, in some of the other provinces there have been several popular uprisings of considerable strength and generally called "Bagaudies." These uprisings must have taken place shortly after the death of my ancestor Schanvoch. Brittany has remained free from the revolts of the "Bagauders." The region enjoys profound tranquility. The impost that we pay into the emperor's fisc is not too heavy. We live peacefully and free.
Several of our ancestors, during the darksome days of their enslavement to Rome, and when they were steeped in ignorance and misery, recorded on our family parchments that such was the leaden uniformity of their days, spent by them from dawn to dusk, in oppressive labors, that they had nothing to say except: "I was born, I have lived and I shall die in the sorrows of slavery." May it please the gods that the happiness of the generations that are to follow me be in turn, so uniform, that each of my descendants may, as I do now, have nothing to add to our family chronicles but these lines with which I shall close my narrative:
"I have lived happy, peaceful and obscure in our Armorican Brittany cultivating our ancestral fields with the help of my family. I shall depart from this world without fear or regret when it will please Hesus to call me away to live again in yonder unknown worlds."
I am now aged eighteen years. The family relics in my possession consist of Hena's gold sickle, Guilhern's little brass bell, Sylvest's iron collar, Genevieve's silver cross, and the casque's lark of Schanvoch.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The Frankish chiefs, at the time of the conquest, daubed their hair with tallow mixed with crushed limestone, to make their hair a glaring reddish-yellow. Such was the beauty of the period.
[2] Ardent, or Fiery. See "The Brass Bell," the second work of this series.
[3] For the source of these recollections, see the third volume of this series, entitled "The Iron Collar."
[4] The color of the Gallic emblem was crimson red.