At first I listened to the "horse-dealer," without catching his meaning. But I was presently seized with a vertigo of horror at the idea that my children, who might unfortunately have escaped the death which their far-sighted mother had intended for them, might be carried to Italy to fulfill such a monstrous destiny. I felt neither anger nor fury, but a grief so great, and a fear so terrible, that I kneeled on the straw, and in spite of my manacles, stretched my pleading hands toward the "horse-dealer." Not finding words to utter my feelings, I wept, kneeling. The "horse-dealer" looked at me in great surprise, and said: "Well, well! What is it, my fine Bull? What ails you?" "My children!" was all I could say, for sobs choked me. "My children! if they are living!" "Your children?" "What you said--the fate that awaits them--if they are sold to those men--" "How? Their fate causes you alarm?" "Hesus! Hesus!" I exclaimed, calling on the god in my lamentation. "It is horrible!" "Are you going crazy?" demanded the "horse-dealer." "And what is there so horrible in the fate which awaits your children? Ah, what barbarians you are in Gaul, indeed. But, know: there is no life easier nor more flowery than that of these little flute-players and dancers with which these rich old fellows amuse themselves. If you could see them, the little rogues, their foreheads crowned with roses, their flowery robes spangled with gold, their rich earrings adorning their heads. And the little girls, if you could see them with their tunics and--" I could contain myself no longer. A bloody mist passed before my eyes. Furiously and desperately I leapt on the vile fellow. But my chain again tightening sharply, I stumbled and fell back on the straw. I looked around me--not a stick nor a stone. Then, crazed with rage, I doubled upon my chain, and gnawed at it like a wild animal. "What a brute of a Gaul!" exclaimed the "horse-dealer," shrugging his shoulders, and keeping well out of reach. "There he is, roaring and jumping and grinding at his chain like a staked wolf, and all because he has been told that his children, if they are pretty, are to live in the midst of wealth, ease and pleasure! What would it have been, then, fool that you are, if they were ugly or deformed? Do you know to whom they would have been sold? They would have been sold to those rich lords, who are so curious to read the future in the palpitating entrails of children freshly slaughtered for divination."[20] "Oh, Hesus!" I cried, filled with hope at the thought, "let it be so with mine, despite their beauty! Oh, death for them! Only let them enter the other world in their innocence, and live near their chaste mother." I could no longer hold back my tears.