"It surely was not out of fear that I spoke, Schanvoch, when I said that those savages would not leave our heads on our shoulders, nor our skins on our bodies. I only spoke from the old habit of sincerity. Well, then, my lads, fall to with a will! Bend to your oars! We have the order from our mother – the Mother of the Camps – and we obey. Forward! even if we are to be flayed alive by the barbarians, a cruel sport that they often indulge in at the expense of their prisoners."

"And it is also said," put in the young soldier with a less unperturbed voice than Douarnek's, "it is also said that the priestesses of the nether world who follow the Frankish hordes drop their prisoners into large brass caldrons, and boil them alive with certain magic herbs."

"Ha! Ha!" replied Douarnek merrily, "the one of us who may be boiled in that way will at least enjoy the advantage of being the first to taste his own soup – that's some consolation. Forward! Ply your oars! We are obeying orders from the Mother of the Camps."

"Oh! We would row straight into an abyss, if Victoria so ordered!"

"She has been well named, the Mother of the Camps and of the soldiers. It is a treat to see her visiting the wounded after each battle."

"And addressing them with her kind words, that almost make the whole ones regret that they have not been wounded, too."

"And then she is so beautiful. Oh, so beautiful!"

"Oh! When she rides through the camp, mounted on her white steed, clad in her long black robe, her bold face looking out from under her casque, and yet her eyes shining with so much mildness, and her smile so motherly! It is like a vision!"

"It is said for certain that our Victoria knows the future as well as she knows the present."

"She must have some charm about her. Who would believe, seeing her, that she is the mother of a son of twenty-two?"

"Oh! If the son had only fulfilled the promise that his younger years gave!"

"Victorin will always be loved as he has been."

"Yes, but it is a great pity!" remarked Douarnek shaking his head sadly, after the other soldiers had thus given vent to their thoughts and feelings. "Yes, it is a great pity! Oh! Victorin is no longer the child of the camps that we, old soldiers with grey moustaches, knew as a baby, rode on our knees, and, down to only recently, looked upon with pride and friendship!"

The words of these soldiers struck me with deeper apprehension than Sampso's words did a few hours before. Not only did I often have to defend Victorin with the severe Sampso, but I had latterly noticed in the army a silent feeling of resentment towards my foster-sister's son, who until then, was the idol of the soldiers.

"What have you to reproach Victorin with?" I asked Douarnek and his companions. "Is he not brave among the bravest? Have you not watched his conduct in war?"

"Oh! If a battle is on, he fights bravely, as bravely as yourself, Schanvoch, when you are at his side, on your large bay horse, and more intent upon defending the son of your foster-sister than upon defending yourself. 'Your scars would declare it, if they could speak through the mouths of your wounds,' as our old proverb says!"

"I fight as a soldier; Victorin fights as a captain. And has not that young captain of only twenty-two years already won five great battles against the Germans and the Franks?"

"His mother, well named Victoria, must have contributed with her counsel towards his victories. He confers with her upon his plans of campaign. But, anyhow, it is true, Victorin is a brave soldier and good captain."

"And is not his purse open to all, so long as there is anything in it? Do you know of any invalid who ever vainly applied to him?"

"Victorin is generous – that also is true."

"Is he not the friend and comrade of the soldiers? Is he ever haughty?"

"No, he is a good comrade, and always cheerful. Besides, what should he be proud about? Are not his father, his glorious mother and himself from the Gallic plebs, like the rest of us?"

"Do you not know, Douarnek, that often it happens that the proudest people are the very ones who have risen from the lowest ranks?"

"Victorin is not proud!"

"Does he not, during war, sleep unsheltered with his head upon the saddle of his horse, like the rest of us horsemen?"

"Brought up by so virile a mother as his, he was bound to grow up a rough soldier, as he is."

"Are you not aware that in council he displays a maturity of judgment that many men of our age do not possess? In short, is it not his bravery, his kindness, his good judgment, his rare military qualities as a soldier and captain that caused him to be acclaimed general by the army, and one of the two Chiefs of Gaul?"

"Yes, but in electing him, all of us knew that his mother Victoria would always be near him, guiding him, instructing him, schooling him in the art of governing men, without neglecting, worthy matron that she is, to sew her linen near the cradle of her grandson, as is her thrifty habit."

"No one knows better than I how precious the advices of Victoria to her son are to our country. But what is it, then, that has changed? Is she not always there, watching over Victorin and Gaul that she loves with equal and paternal devotion? Come, now, Douarnek, answer me with a soldier's frankness. Whence comes the hostility that, I fear, is ever spreading and deepening against Victorin, our young and brave general?"

"Listen, Schanvoch. I am, like yourself, a seasoned soldier. Your moustache, although younger than mine, begins to show grey streaks. Do you want to know the truth? Here it is: We are all aware that the life of the camp does not make people chaste and reserved like young girls who are brought up by our venerated female druids. We also know, because we have emptied many a cup, that our Gallic wines throw us into a merry and riotous humor. We know, furthermore, that when he is in a garrison, the young soldier who proudly carries a cockade on his casque and caresses his brown or blonde moustache, does not long preserve the friendship of fathers who have handsome daughters, or of husbands who have handsome wives. But, for all that, you will have to admit, Schanvoch, that a soldier who is habitually intoxicated like a brute, and takes cowardly advantage of women, would deserve to be treated to a hundred or more stripes laid on well upon his back, and to be ignominiously driven from camp. Is not that so?"

"That is all very true, but what connection has it with Victorin?"

"Listen, friend Schanvoch, and then answer me. If an obscure soldier deserves such treatment for his shameful conduct, what should be done to an army chief who disgraces himself in such fashion?"

"Do you venture to say that Victorin has offered violence to women and that he is daily drunk?" I cried indignantly. "I say that you lie, or those who carried such tales to you lied. So, these are the unworthy rumors that circulate in the camp against Victorin! And can you be credulous enough to attach faith to them?"

"Soldiers are not quite so credulous, friend Schanvoch, but they are aware of the old Gallic proverb – 'The lost sheep are charged to the shepherd.' Now, for instance, you know Captain Marion, the old blacksmith?"

"Yes, I know the brave fellow to be one of the best officers in the army."

"The famous Captain Marion, who can carry an ox on his shoulders," put in one of the soldiers, "and who can knock down the same ox with a blow of his fist – his arm is as heavy as the iron mace of a butcher."

"And Captain Marion," added another oarsman, "is a good comrade, for all that, despite his strength and military renown. He took a simple soldier, a former fellow blacksmith, for his 'friend in war,' or, as they used to say in olden times, took the 'pledge of brotherhood' with him."

"I am aware of the bravery, modesty, good judgment and austerity of Captain Marion," I answered him, "but why do you now bring in his name?"

"Have a little patience, friend Schanvoch, I shall satisfy you in a minute. Did you see the two Bohemian girls enter Mayence a few days ago in a wagon drawn by mules covered with tinkling bells and led by a Negro lad?"

"I did not see the women, but have heard them mentioned. But I must insist upon it, what has all this got to do with Victorin?"

"I have reminded you of the proverb – 'The lost sheep are charged to the shepherd.' It would be idle to attribute habits of drunkenness and incontinence to Captain Marion, would it not? Despite all his simpleness, the soldier would not believe a word of such slanders; not so? While, on the other hand, the soldier would be ready to believe any story of debauchery about the said Bohemian strollers, and he would trust the narrator of the tale, do you understand?"

"I understand you, Douarnek, and I shall be frank in turn. Yes, Victorin loves wine and indulges in it with some of his companions in arms. Yes, having been left a widower at the age of twenty, only a few months after his marriage, Victorin has occasionally yielded to the headlong impulses of youth. Often did his mother, as well as myself, regret that he was not endowed with greater austerity in morals, a virtue, however, that is extremely rare at his age. But, by the anger of the gods! I, who have never been from Victorin's side since his earliest childhood, deny that drunkenness is habitual with him; above all I deny that he ever was base enough to do violence to a woman!"

"Schanvoch, you defend the son of your foster-sister out of the goodness of your heart, although you know him to be guilty – unless you really are ignorant of what you deny – "

"What am I ignorant of?"

"An adventure that has raised a great scandal, and that everybody in camp knows."

"What adventure?"

"A short time ago Victorin and several officers of the army went to a tavern on one of the isles near the border of the Rhine to drink and make merry. In the evening, being by that time drunk as usual, Victorin violated the tavern-keeper's wife, who, in her despair, threw herself into the river and was drowned."

"The soldier who misdemeaned himself in that manner," remarked one of the oarsmen, "would speedily have his head cut off by a strict chief."

"And he would have deserved the punishment," added another oarsman. "As much as the next man, I would find pleasure in bantering with the tavern-keeper's wife. But to offer her violence, that is an act of savagery worthy only of those Frankish butchers, whose priestesses, veritable devil's cooks, boil their prisoners alive in their caldrons."

I was so stupefied by the accusation made against Victorin that I remained silent for a moment. But my voice soon came to me and I cried:

"Calumny! A calumny as infamous as the act would have been. Who is it dares accuse Victoria's son of such a crime?"

"A well informed man," Douarnek answered me.

"His name! Give me the liar's name!"

"His name is Morix. He was the secretary of one of Victoria's relatives. He came to the camp about a month ago to confer upon grave matters."

"The relative is Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony," I said with increased stupefaction. "The man is the incarnation of kindness and loyalty; he is one of Victoria's oldest and most faithful friends."

"All of which renders the man's testimony all the more reliable."

"What! He, Tetrik! Did Tetrik confirm what you have just said?"

"He communicated it to his secretary, and confirmed the occurrence, while deploring the shocking excesses of Victorin's dissoluteness."

"Calumny! Tetrik has only words of kindness and esteem for Victoria's son."

"Schanvoch, I have served in the army for the last twenty-five years. Ask my officers whether Douarnek is a liar."

"I believe you to be sincere; only you have been shamefully imposed upon."

"Morix, the secretary of Tetrik, narrated the occurrence not to me only but to other soldiers in the camp for whose wine he was paying. We all placed confidence in his words, because more than once did I myself and several others of my companions see Victorin and his friends heated with wine and indulging in crazy feats of arms."

"Does not the ardor of courage heat up young heads as much as wine?"

"Listen, Schanvoch, I have seen – with my own eyes – Victorin drive his steed into the Rhine saying that he would cross the river on horseback; and he would certainly have been drowned had not another soldier and I rushed into a boat and fished him half drunk out of the water, while the current carried his horse away. And do you know what Victorin then said to us? 'You should have let me drink; the white wine of Beziers runs in this stream.' What I am telling you now is no calumny, Schanvoch, I saw it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears."

Despite my attachment to Victorin I could not but reply to the soldier's testimony, saying: "I knew him to be incapable of an act of cowardice and infamy; but I also knew him to be capable of certain acts of extravagance and hotheadedness."

"As to myself," replied another soldier, "more than once, as I mounted guard near Victorin's house which is separated from Victoria's by a little plot of flowers, have I seen veiled women leave his place at early dawn. They were of all colors and sizes, blondes and brunettes, tall and short, some robust and stout, others slender and thin. At least, that was the impression that the women left upon me, unless the gloaming deceived my sight, and it was always the same woman."

"I notice that you are too sincere to make any answer to that, friend Schanvoch," Douarnek said to me; indeed, I could raise no objection against the latter accusation. "You must, therefore, not feel surprised at our trust in the words of Tetrik's secretary. You must admit that the man who in a drunken fit takes the Rhine for a stream of Bezier's wine, and from whose house a procession of women is seen to issue in the morning, is quite capable, in a fit of inebriety, of doing violence to a tavern-keeper's wife."

"No!" I cried. "A man may be afflicted with the faults of his years in an aggravated degree, without therefore being an infamous fellow, a criminal!"

"See here, Schanvoch, you are the personal friend of our mother Victoria. You love Victorin as if he were your own son. Say to him – 'The soldiers, even the grossest and most dissolute among them, do not like to see their own vices reproduced in the chief whom they have chosen. By your conduct, the army's affection is daily withdrawn more and more from you and is centering wholly upon Victoria.'"

"Yes," I answered thoughtfully, "and the process started since Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony, the relative and friend of Victoria, made his last visit to our camp. Until then our young chief was generally beloved, despite his little foibles."

"That is true. He is so good, so brave, so kind to all! He sat his horse so well! He had so bold a military bearing! We loved the young captain as an own child! We knew him as a babe, and rode him on our knees when still a little fellow, during the watches in the camp! Later we shut our eyes to his foibles, because parents are ever indulgent! But there can be no room for indulgence towards baseness!"

"And of this baseness," I replied, now more and more forcibly struck by the circumstance, which, recalling certain incidents to my mind, awakened a vague suspicion in me, "and of these acts of baseness there is no evidence other than the word of Tetrik's secretary?"

"The secretary repeated to us his own master's words."

During this conversation, to which I lent increasing attention, our bark, ever moving forward under the vigorous strokes of the four oarsmen, had traversed the Rhine and reached the opposite shore. The soldier's backs were turned to the bank on which we were about to land. I was so wholly absorbed in what I had just learned regarding the army's increasing disaffection towards Victorin, that I never once thought of casting my eyes upon the shore to which we were drawing near. Suddenly a sharp whizz struck our ears. I cried out: "Throw yourselves down flat upon your benches!"

It was too late. A volley of long arrows flew over our boat. One of the oarsmen was instantly killed, while Douarnek, whose back was still turned to the shore received one of the arrows in the back.

"This is the way the Franks receive parliamentarians during a truce," remarked the veteran without dropping his oar, and even without turning around. "This is the first time I have been hit in the back. An arrow in the back does not become a soldier. Pull it out quick, comrade," he added, addressing the oarsman who sat behind him.

But despite his intrepidity, Douarnek managed his oar with less vigor. Although the wound that he received was not serious, his face betrayed the pain that he felt; the blood flowed copiously.

"I told you so, Schanvoch," he proceeded to say. "I told you that your foliage of peace would prove a poor rampart against the treachery of the Frankish barbarians. Fall to, my lads! We must now row all the harder, seeing we are only three left. Our comrade yonder, who is bumping his nose against his bench, with his limbs stiffened, can no longer count as an oarsman!"

Douarnek had not finished his sentence before I dashed forward to the prow of the bark, and passing over the corpse of the soldier who lay dead across his bench seized one of the oak branches and waved it over my head as a signal of peace.

A second volley of arrows, that came flying from behind an embankment of the river, was the only answer to my appeal. One of the missiles grazed my arm, another broke off its point against my iron casque; but none of the soldiers was hit. We were then only a short distance from the shore. I threw myself into the water, swam a little distance, and as soon as my feet struck ground called out to Douarnek:

"Pull the bark safely beyond the reach of the arrows and drop anchor, then wait for me. If I am not back after sunset, return to camp and inform Victoria that I have either been made prisoner or killed by the Franks. She will take my wife Ellen and my son Alguen under her protection."

"I do not at all like the idea of leaving you alone in the hands of those barbarians, friend Schanvoch," answered Douarnek; "but to stay where we can be killed would be to deprive you of all possible means of return to our camp, should you be lucky enough to escape with your life. Courage, Schanvoch! We shall await the evening!"

And the bark pulled away, while I clambered up the embankment.