After I had beheld my mother and all the other women of the tribe die to escape the shame and outrages of slavery, the blood which I had lost caused me to swoon away. A long time passed in which I was bereft of reason. When my senses returned, I found myself lying on straw, along with a great number of other men, in a vast shed. At my first motion I found myself chained by the leg to a stake driven into the ground. I was half clad; they had left me my shirt and breeches, in a secret pocket of which I had hidden the writings of my father and of my brother Albinik, together with the little gold sickle, the gift of my sister Hena. A dressing had been put on my wounds, which no longer occasioned me much pain. I experienced only a great weakness and dizziness which made my last memories a confused mass. I looked about me. I was one of perhaps fifty wounded prisoners, all chained to their litters. At the further end of the shed were several armed men, who did not bear the appearance of regular Roman troops. They were seated round a table, drinking and singing. Some among them, who carried short-handled scourges twisted of several thongs and terminating in bits of lead, detached themselves from time to time from the group, and walked here and there with the uncertain gait of drunken men, casting jeering looks on the prisoners. Next to me lay an aged man with white hair and beard, very pale and thin. A bloody band half hid his forehead. He was sitting up, his elbows on his knees, and his face between his hands. Seeing him wounded and a prisoner, I concluded he was a Gaul. I did not err. "Good father," I said to him, laying my hand lightly upon the old man's arm, "where are we?" Slowly raising his sad and mournful visage, the old prisoner answered compassionately: "Those are the first words you have spoken for two days." "For two days?" I repeated, greatly astonished. I was unable to believe so much time had passed since the battle of Vannes. I sought to recall my wandering memory. "Is it possible? What, I have been here two days?" "Yes, and you have been unconscious, in a delirium. The physician who dressed your wounds made you take several potions." "Now I recall it confusedly. And also--a ride in a chariot?" "Yes, to come here from the battle-ground. I was with you in the chariot, whither they carried you wounded and dying." "And here we are--?" "At Vannes." "Our army?" "Destroyed." "Our fleet?" "Annihilated."[13] "O, my brother, and your courageous wife Meroe, both dead also!" flashed through my mind. "And Vannes, where we are," I added aloud to my companion, "Vannes is in the power of the Romans?" "Even as the whole of Brittany, they say." "And the Chief of the Hundred Valleys?" "He has fled into the mountains of Ares with a handful of cavalry. The Romans are in pursuit of him." Then raising his eyes to heaven, he continued, "May Hesus and Teutates protect that last defender of the Gauls!"