A Captive of the Roman Eagles Part 6

"Or, if you prefer it, a dream, the fulfilment of a dream. I believe in dreams."

"Of course," said the Tribune, smiling, "like all poets! I care more for waking thoughts."

"When I reached the army over yonder in Vindonissa, a lovely charming memory of a child rose vividly before me; a child equally bewitching in mind and person, whom I knew and loved here several years ago."

"A boy?"

"No, a girl."

"Ho, ho, pedagogue of the Emperor!" cried the Tribune, laughing.

Hercula.n.u.s did not enter into the jest; he was silently watching Ausonius's every look.

"Oh, calm yourself! Bissula is a girl about twelve years old--that is--she was in those days. She and a Sarmatian boy brought to Arbor every week the fish her uncle had caught on the northern sh.o.r.e of the lake. And how delightfully she talked! Even her Barbarian Latin sounded sweetly from her cherry-red lips. We became the best of friends. I gave her--she would accept neither money nor costly jewels--trifling articles, especially seeds of fine Gallic fruit and flowers from Garumna for her little garden. She told me strange stories of the G.o.ds and fauns in the woods, the nymphs in the lakes and springs here in the country,--but she gave them different names,--and the mountain giants opposite, whose white heads glittered in the sunset light. And I--I--"

"You read the 'Mosella' to her, of course!" laughed Saturninus.

"Certainly. And the little Barbarian girl showed a better appreciation of it than the great Roman general. It was not the fish that pleased _her_ best--"

"I can easily believe it: she had better ones herself, you said just now."

"But the descriptions of the vineyards and villas along the river. And when I told her that in my home on the Garumna were far, far handsomer and richer houses, full of marble, gold, bronze, and ivory, adorned with brightly painted walls and mosaics; that I myself owned the most beautiful palaces and magnificent gardens full of leaping water, foreign stags and deer, and birds with sweet songs or brilliant plumage; when I spoke of the deep blue of the sky and the golden light of the sun in the glorious land of Aquitania where almost perpetual summer reigned, she could not hear enough in prose and verse of the splendor of our country and the magnificence and art of our life. Once she clapped her little hands in surprise and delight, exclaiming: 'Oh, father, I should like to see that too. Just one day!' But I had grown so fond of the gay, sweet child that, with a thrill of joy at the thought, I answered: 'Come, my little daughter, not for a day--forever.

If your guardian will consent, I will adopt you as my child and take you to Burdigala. How gladly my wife will welcome you! My daughters will treat you as a dear sister. You shall become a Roman maiden!'

"But, like a frightened deer, she sprang from my lap, ran off, leaped into her boat, rowed swiftly across the lake, and did not return for many days. I was full of anxiety lest I had driven her away forever. At last--it was a time of complete peace--I had myself rowed across the lake to its northern sh.o.r.e and guided to her hut in the forest. But she had scarcely caught sight of me when, with a loud cry of terror, she climbed into a huge oak as nimbly as a woodp.e.c.k.e.r and hid herself among the branches. She would not come down again until I had solemnly promised, in the presence of her uncle and her grandmother, not to take her away and never even to say a word about it: 'For,' she said, with tears in her eyes, 'in that hot country I should die of homesickness for my own family, the neighbors, nay, even for the mountain, the meadow, and lake, like the forest flowers transplanted from the marshy soil into dry sand.'"

"A sensible child," remarked the Tribune thoughtfully, stroking his beautiful brown beard. "So she is pretty?"

"I think so!" cried Hercula.n.u.s: the voice sounded almost savage.

"Why, nephew, you have never seen her."

"But you have described her to us often enough! I could paint her, with her bright red locks."

"And her name is Bissula?" Saturninus added.

"Yes, 'the little one,'" replied Ausonius, "for she is very slender and delicate of limb. I then saw her regularly again, but kept my promise not to ask her to go with me. When I bade her farewell, she wept with a child's loving tears. 'With you,' she said 'I part from a warm, bright, beautiful world, into which, as it were, I peeped, standing on tiptoe, over a curtain.'

"Recently, on reaching Vindonissa--during my journey through the country I had thought much of the charming child--I saw her before me in a dream the first night, encircled by a poisonous serpent. Her eyes were raised to mine, imploring help, I woke with a cry, and my heart grew heavy at the thought of what might befall the lovely girl--for she must have become beautiful--if our cohorts bring all the horrors of war into the forests along the sh.o.r.e of the lake. And I confess, it was princ.i.p.ally to see that child again--perhaps to protect her until the war should be over--that I entreated the Emperor to permit me to join this expedition."

CHAPTER XII.

"But I suppose you did not think your uncle's life would be sufficiently safe under my protection, Hercula.n.u.s, since you were so eager to join us?" asked the Tribune.

Before the nephew could answer, Ausonius interrupted: "But--thank the G.o.ds--our campaign will be bloodless: the Barbarians have abandoned the country. Where can they have gone? What have you learned through your spies of the movements of the enemy?"

"Nothing. That is the mysterious part of it. It seems as though the earth had swallowed them. They are said to have numerous subterranean pa.s.sages and cellars, in which they conceal their provisions and themselves in times of danger. We found it very difficult to obtain spies among our colonists on the southern sh.o.r.e. They know very well that we Romans come and go; the Alemanni remain in the country, and they fear their vengeance. And deserters can no longer be had. In former wars they were often mentioned. But the fact that there are no renegades shows that self-reliance is increasing and the dread or hope of Rome is declining. I could get only two volunteers--for a large sum of money--to venture upon a reconnoitring expedition; the one who went to the East returned without having seen a sign of the foe; the one dispatched to the North has not yet appeared. And unfortunately we have not taken even one prisoner. Not a sign of a human footprint have we seen on the whole march along the lake. Once, it is true, I thought I saw a light column of smoke rising from the dense growth of rushes which stretches for leagues into the lake, and ordered the troops to halt; but the tiny cloud instantly vanished."

"I can understand the strategy of our admirable General only by crediting him with an almost offensive degree of caution," sneered the commander of the mailed hors.e.m.e.n. "By Hercules! Wherever they may hide, the Barbarians cannot be a day's march from us."

"Yes," Ausonius a.s.sented. "Yet I should think we might be strong enough to seek them and drive them from their hiding places."

Saturninus frowned slightly. "Your nephew's opinion of my courage gives me no concern. But you, Prefect, have again forgotten that, by the Emperor's orders, we are not to disperse the Barbarians, but to surround them and force them to submission. We are too weak for this encircling, and must wait for the ships. Unless our fleet should block the lake, they will again escape, as they have often done, in their boats. Stick to your hexameters, my Pierian friend, and leave the Barbarians to me: it will be better for all concerned."

"Except the Barbarians!" replied Ausonius smiling, extending his hand to his friend.

"Who are probably the leaders of the enemy?"

"The Romans on the southern sh.o.r.e mention two names. The rest of the Alemanni provinces are mainly ruled by kings."

"So far do Germans carry royalty," nodded the learned Prefect. "May they always continue to be divided into numberless provinces under their hedge kings and village magistrates, whom each man obeys as much as he chooses."

"It seems that this state of things has changed. Many provinces are united in leagues, which hold together in peace as well as in war. The men of Linzgau have no king now, it appears, only an aged count. But he must be a man of powerful intellect, since the gray-haired Hariowald has been chosen commander-in-chief of all the provinces leagued against us. True, we have not to deal solely with the Lentienses. After centuries of folly these Barbarians are beginning to discover that 'liberty,' that is, the privilege of doing what each man pleases without regard to his neighbor, is, though a delightful, a somewhat dangerous pleasure, and that with such 'liberty' they will be forever our bondmen, so long as one province looks on with malicious pleasure while we subjugate another with which it has had a quarrel--till its own turn comes. Formerly they preferred to place their surplus of young men at our disposal rather than have them obey the commands of one of their own people, but for some time there has been a change; even those splendid soldiers, my Batavians, no longer wish to remain with me, and will not renew their oath of service. We no longer hear the names of numberless small peoples: five or six great leagues fill the whole country from the Ister to the Suabian Sea. It has long made me uneasy.

That old man is now the commander-in-chief of all the Germans allied against us."

"Commander-in-chief of the Alemanni!"

"Don't laugh at them, Ausonius! Ay, this leadership of the woodland war has cost us much blood and many a dear-bought victory, since the days of that Quinctilius Varus. As the white-beard is said to be the head, a young relative of his is called the arm, the sword, the fire-brand of the conflict."

"What is his name?"

"Attalus."

"Adalo! That was one of Bissula's playmates. She often mentioned him. I saw him frequently; he looked at me defiantly enough. Could it be he?"

"The women and men at our stations along the lake cannot say enough in praise of his beauty and strength."

"Well, hitherto neither the warlike wisdom of the old man nor the warlike zeal of the young one has showed itself," sneered Hercula.n.u.s.

"Yes," laughed Ausonius. "Their wisdom is the resolve to run away, and their zeal the energy with which they execute the decision."

But the Tribune, with frowning brow, cried: "Such speeches drive away the G.o.ddess of victory and summon the avenger of foolhardiness. Jeer after we have conquered--and even then, it is wiser not to do it.

Nemesis sleeps lightly."

"If you cannot discover where the Barbarians are hiding, what will you do?"

"Seek them until I do find them and bring them to a halt."

"But then," cried Hercula.n.u.s, "let there be no treaties, no mercy, nothing save extermination. How often these faithless people have broken the peace! Our legions are full of fury against the Barbarians who, year after year, compel them to march through these horrible marshy forests. Only the extirpation of the last German will give peace to the Roman Empire." He clenched his fist threateningly.

"You have perhaps uttered words of prophecy," said Saturninus thoughtfully, "but in a different sense from what you intended."

"He has uttered abominable words!" cried Ausonius, filling his goblet.

"And they are utterly groundless. Ay, more than a century ago it looked as if the Persians and Germans under Gallienus would flood the Eastern and the Western Empire. But since that time Eternal Rome has grown young once more. Your brave countrymen, my Saturninus, the heroic Illyrian emperors, have curbed the barbarians on the Euphrates, the Rhine, and the Ister. Diocletian has remodelled the internal affairs of the Empire; and so I might adapt to Rome's mastery of the world the proud words of my colleague Horace: 'He did not lack talent, but he possessed little learning.'"

"Do they belong to poetry?" asked Saturninus doubtfully.