The Casque's Lark Part 30

"What are they?" asked Tetrik.

"This is the first," replied Marion: "The Mother of the Camps shall remain in Mayence to help me with her advice. I am as new a hand at my new work as a blacksmith's apprentice who for the first time dips the iron into the brasier."

"I promised you that I would, Marion," answered my foster-sister. "I shall remain here as long as you may need my services."

"Victoria, if your spirit should withdraw from me, I would be like a body without a soul--accordingly, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know that that promise must cost you a good deal, poor woman.

And yet," added the captain with his habitual good nature, "do not run away with the idea that I am so foolishly vainglorious as to imagine that it is to the strong bull of a warrior, named Marion, that Victoria the Great makes the sacrifice of burying her grief in order to guide him. No--no. It is to our old Gaul that she renders the sacrifice. As a good son of my country, I am as thankful for the kind act done to my mother, as if it were done to myself."

"n.o.bly thought and n.o.bly said, Marion," replied Victoria deeply touched by these words of the captain. "Nevertheless, your straightforwardness and sound judgment will soon enable you to dispense with my advice; then," added she with an expression of profound pain that she strove to repress, "I shall be able, like you, Tetrik, to retire and bury myself in some secluded spot with my sorrows."

"Alas," replied the governor, "to weep in peace is the only consolation for irreparable losses." "But," he proceeded, addressing the captain, "you referred to two conditions. Victoria has accepted the first; which is the second?"

"Oh! As to the second, it is as important to me as the first," and the captain shook his head. "Aye, it is as important as the first--"

"And what is it?" asked my foster-sister. "Explain yourself, Marion."

"I know not," replied the good captain with a nave and embarra.s.sed mien, "I know not whether I ever spoke to you of my friend Eustace."

"Yes, and more than once," replied Tetrik. "But what has your friend Eustace to do with your new functions?"

"What!" cried Captain Marion, "you ask me what my friend Eustace has to do with me--you might as well ask what has the sheath of the sword to do with the blade, the hammer with the handle, the bellows with the forge."

"You are, in short, bound together by an old and close friendship; we know it," said Victoria. "Would you desire, captain, to accord some favor to your friend?"

"I shall never consent to be separated from him. True enough, he is not of a gay disposition; he is habitually sullen, often peevish. Still, he loves me as I do him, and we can not do without each other. Now, then, it may be considered surprising that the Chief of Gaul should have a common soldier, a former blacksmith, for his intimate friend and chum.

But as I said to you, Victoria, if I must be separated from my friend Eustace, the plan falls through--I decline. Only his friendship can render the burden supportable to me."

"Is not Schanvoch, my foster-brother, who remained a simple horseman in the army, a close friend of mine?" observed Victoria. "No one is astonished at a friendship that does honor to us both. It will be so, Captain Marion, with you and your old blacksmith friend."

"And your elevation, Captain Marion, will redouble your mutual affection," put in Tetrik. "In his tender affection your friend will rejoice over your elevation perhaps more than yourself."

"I doubt whether my friend Eustace will greatly rejoice over my elevation," replied Marion. "Eustace is not ambitious after glory. Far from it. He loves me, his old companion at the anvil, and not the captain. But, Victoria, always keep this in mind: The same as to-day you say to me: 'Marion, you are needed,' never be backward in saying: 'Marion, be gone; you are of no further use; someone else will fill the place better than you.' I shall understand the slightest hint, and shall gladly return arm in arm with my friend Eustace to our pot of beer and our armor. So long, however, as you will say to me: 'Marion, you are needed,' I shall remain Chief of Gaul"--and smothering a last sigh, "seeing that you insist that I fill the place."

"And chief you will long remain to the glory of Gaul," put in Tetrik.

"Believe me, captain, you do not know yourself; your modesty blinds you.

But a few hours hence, when Victoria will propose you to the soldiers as their general, the acclamation of the whole army will inform you of the high opinion that is entertained for your merits."

"The one who will be most astonished at my merits will be myself,"

replied the good captain navely. "Well, I have made the promise; it is promised; count with me, Victoria, you have my word. I shall withdraw--I shall go to my lodging and wait for my good friend Eustace. It is now dawn; he is due from the advanced posts, where he has been on guard since yesterday. He will be uneasy if he does not find me in."

"Forget not, captain," I said to him, "to ask your friend for the name of the soldier whom he chose to escort me."

"I shall remember."

"And now, adieu," said the Governor of Gascony with a smothered voice to Victoria. "Adieu; the sun will soon be up. Every minute that I spend here is torture to me--"

"Would you not stay in Mayence at least until the ashes of my two children are returned to the earth?" Victoria asked the governor. "Will you not accord that religious homage to the memory of those who have just preceded us to those unknown worlds, where we shall one day meet them again? Oh! May it please Hesus that that day be soon!"

"Oh! Our druid faith will always be the consolation of strong souls and the support of the weak!" answered Tetrik. "Alas! But for the certainty of meeting again the beings whom we have loved in this world, how much more dreadful would not their departure in death be to us! Believe me, Victoria, I shall see long before you, these dear beings whom to-day we weep. Agreeable to your wishes, I shall render to them to-day, before my departure, the last homage that is due to them."

Tetrik and Captain Marion withdrew, leaving Victoria, Sampso and myself alone.

CHAPTER IV.

FUNERAL PYRES.

Left all alone to ourselves, we no longer repressed our tears. In silent and pious meditation we clad Ellen in her wedding gown, while you, my child, still slept peacefully.

In order to attend to the supreme interests of Gaul, Victoria had heroically curbed her grief. After the departure of Tetrik and Marion she gave way to the overpowering sorrow that heaved her bosom. She wished to wash the wounds of her son and grandson with her own hands; with her maternal hands she wrapped them in the same winding cloth. Two funeral pyres were raised on the border of the Rhine, one destined for Victorin and his son, the other for my wife Ellen.

Towards noon, two war chariots covered with green and accompanied by several of our venerated female druids proceeded to my house. The body of my wife Ellen was deposited on one of the two chariots, on the other the remains of Victorin and his son.

"Schanvoch," said Victoria to me, "I shall follow on foot the chariot on which your beloved wife lies. Be merciful, brother, follow on foot the chariot on which lie the remains of my son and grandson. Before the eyes of all, you, the outraged husband, will thus be giving a token of pardon to the memory of Victorin. And I also, will, before the eyes of all, give token, as a mother, of pardon for the death that, alas! my son but too fully merited!"

I understood the touching appeal that lay in that thought of mutual mercy and pardon. It was so done. A deputation of the cohorts and legions preceded the funeral procession. I followed the hea.r.s.es accompanied by Victoria, Sampso, Tetrik and Marion. The chief officers of the camp joined us. We marched amidst lugubrious silence. The first outburst of rage against Victorin having spent itself, the army now only remembered his bravery, his kindness, his openheartedness. The crowds saw me, the victim of an outrage that cost Ellen's life, give public token of pardon to Victorin by my following the hea.r.s.e that carried his remains; they also saw his mother following the hea.r.s.e on which Ellen reposed, and none had any but words of forgiveness and pity for the memory of the young general.

The funeral convoy was approaching the river bank where the two pyres were raised, when Douarnek, who marched at the head of one of the deputations of cohorts, profited by a halt in the procession to approach me. He said with p.r.o.nounced sadness:

"Schanvoch, you have my sympathy. a.s.sure Victoria, your sister, that we, the soldiers, remember only the valor of her glorious son. He has so long been our beloved son as well. Why did he disregard the frank and wise words that I carried to him in the name of our whole army, on the evening after our great battle of the Rhine! Had Victorin taken our advice and mended his ways, had he reformed, none of these misfortunes would have happened--"

"Your words, comrade, will be a consolation to Victoria in her grief," I answered Douarnek. "But do you know whatever became of the hooded soldier who committed the barbarity of killing Victorin's child?"

"Neither I, nor any of those near me at the time when the abominable crime was committed, was able to catch the felon. He slipped from us in the tumult and darkness. He fled towards the outposts of the camp, but there, thanks to the G.o.ds, he met with condign punishment."

"He is dead?"

"Perhaps you know Eustace, the old blacksmith and friend of our brave Captain Marion? He was mounting guard last night at the outposts. It seems that Eustace has a sweetheart in town. Excuse me, Schanvoch, if I mention to you such matters on so sad an occasion, but you asked me, and I am answering--"

"Proceed, friend Douarnek."

"Well, instead of remaining at his post, and despite the watchword, Eustace spent a part of the night in Mayence. He was returning at about an hour before dawn, hoping, as he said to me, that his absence would have pa.s.sed unnoticed, when he saw a hooded man running breathlessly near the posts on the river bank. 'Whither are you running so fast?' he cried out. 'Those brutes are pursuing me!' was the answer, 'because I broke the head of Victoria's grandson by dashing it against the cobble-stones; they want to kill me.' 'And they are right! You deserve death!' replied Eustace indignantly. Saying this he overtook the infamous murderer and ran his sword through him. The corpse was found this morning on the beach with his cloak and hood."

The soldier's death destroyed my last hope of unraveling the mystery that hung over that fatal night.

The remains of Ellen, Victorin and his son were placed upon the pyres, amidst the chants of the bards and druids. A sheet of flame rose skyward. When the chants ceased only two heaps of ashes remained.

The ashes of the pyre of Victorin and his son were piously gathered by Victoria into a bronze urn, that she placed under a mural tablet bearing the simple and touching inscription:

HERE REST THE TWO

That same evening the two Bohemian girls left Mayence. Tetrick also took his departure after having exchanged the most touching adieus with Victoria. Captain Marion was presented to the troops by the Mother of the Camps and was acclaimed Chief of Gaul and general of the army. The choice evoked no surprise; moreover, being presented by Victoria, whose influence had in a manner increased with the death of her son and grandson, there was no question of his being accepted. The bravery, the good judgment, the wisdom of Captain Marion were long known and appreciated by the soldiers. After his acclamation, the new general p.r.o.nounced the following words, which I later found reproduced by a contemporary historian:

"Comrades, I know that the trade of my youth may be objected to in me.

Let him blame me who wills. Yes, people may twit me all they please with having been a blacksmith, provided the enemy admits that I have forged their ruin. But, as to you, my good comrades, never forget that the chief whom you have just chosen never knew and never will know how to hold anything but the sword."