To appreciate the characteristic qualities of this dialogue the reader should compare it with the corresponding versified dialogue by Robert Browning, in which the old Italian passionateness finds expression. Browning's language is more vehement than France's, more spasmodic and more spontaneous. France, as a rule, produces his effect entirely by the contrast between the inner logic of men's feelings in these old days and in ours. The most fully elaborated of the tales is that entitled _Commius, the Atrebate_, which describes the career of a Gallic chieftain in the time of Cæsar. Although the author appears to have drawn as freely on his imagination here as in The _Singer of Kyme_, he has in this case built upon a sound historical foundation. The reader with Cæsar's _Commentaries_ fresh in his memory will remember what they tell about the Atrebate chief, Commius. To France it has been a congenial task to probe the mind of a barbarian of those days--to describe Commius's care-free life as the chief of his tribe, to show how he is won over by the Romans and feels flattered by being called Cæsar's friend, but is gradually led to regard the loss of freedom as a disgrace, until his feeling towards the Romans becomes the barbarian's fierce hatred. Most readers will feel that not until they made acquaintance with this story had they a thorough understanding of the difference between the Roman methods of warfare and those of the barbarians, and in especial of the skill in engineering which had been acquired by the little dark soldiers who made war more with the pickaxe and the spade than with the javelin and the sword. Very masterly is the description of the barbarian king's astonishment and affright when, after an absence of a few years, he returns to his poor capital, Nemetoeenna (the Arras of to-day), and finds it transformed by the Romans into a magnificent town, with temples and colonnades. He cannot but believe them possessed of magic power. We follow him with keen interest as he wanders through the town disguised as a beggar; we watch his surprise at the paintings on the houses, of the subjects of which he understands nothing; we see him murder a young Roman who is sitting in the amphitheatre composing Latin verses in a Greek metre to his Phoebe. Here again France produces his effect by the silent throwing into relief of the difference between men's ideas in those days and in ours. He writes as follows, for instance, of the prefect of the Roman horse, Caius Volucenus Quadratus, who resolves to invite Commius to a friendly conference, and to have a deadly blow dealt him from behind whilst he himself is taking him by the hand.