The Casque's Lark Part 38

And without caring to listen to me any longer he left.

The will of G.o.d 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--Zen.o.bia. She was loaded with golden chains riveted to the gold collar that she wore around her neck. Behind Zen.o.bia 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.

EPILOGUE.

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 ill.u.s.trious 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 G.o.ds 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 bra.s.s 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 Bra.s.s Bell," the second work of this series.

[3] For the source of these recollections, see the third volume of this series, ent.i.tled "The Iron Collar."

[4] The color of the Gallic emblem was crimson red.