"You pity her, mother!" cried Victorin. "That creature thievish and savage like the rest of her kith! You pity her! I feel certain that she followed Schanvoch only in order to find an opportunity to introduce herself into your house, cut your throat and then rob you!" "I pity her for being born of such a stock," answered Victoria sadly. "I pity her for having harbored murder in her heart." "Believe me," I said to my foster-sister. "That woman's death is a just punishment; besides it puts an end to a life that was soiled with crimes at which nature shudders. May it have pleased the gods that, like Elwig, her brother Neroweg lost his life to-day, and that his stock may be extinguished in him. I will otherwise regret all my life that I did not finish the man when I had a chance. I have a presentiment that his descendants will be fatal to mine." Victoria gave me a look of astonishment at hearing me utter these words, the sense of which she could not comprehend. But Victorin turned her thoughts and mine into other channels, exclaiming: "Hesus be blessed, mother! This was a happy day for Gaul! You escaped a grave danger, and our arms are victorious! The Franks are driven from our frontier!--" Victorin broke off; he seemed to listen to a sound in the distance; with flashing eyes he resumed: "Do you hear, mother? Do you hear the song that the wind carries to our ears?" We all remained silent; and repeated in chorus by thousands of voices tremulous with the joy of triumph, the following refrain reached us across the stillness of the night: "This morning we said:-- 'How many are there of these barbarians?' This evening we say:-- 'How many were there of these blood-thirsty Franks!'" PART II. DOMESTIC TRAITORS. CHAPTER I. GATHERING SHADOWS. Several years have elapsed since I wrote for you, my child, the account that closed with the great battle of the Rhine. The utter annihilation of the Frankish hordes and the simultaneous destruction of their establishment on the other side of the river, freed Gaul of the perpetual fear that she stood in, of a threatened invasion of barbarians. Perhaps from their retreat in the woods of northern Germany the Franks are now only awaiting a favorable opportunity to swoop down again upon Gaul. But for all the joy of this deliverance, I now resume my narrative after having experienced years of bitter sorrow. Great misfortunes have befallen me across this interval. I have seen a frightful intrigue of hypocrisy and malice unfold before my eyes. Since then an incurable sadness has taken possession of my soul. I left the borders of the Rhine for Brittany; here I established myself with your second mother and you, my son, at the identical place that long ago was the cradle of our family--near the sacred stones of Karnak, the witnesses of the heroic sacrifice of our ancestress Hena.