When you will be old enough to read these pages, my son, you will understand the cause of these mortal fits of sadness in which you have often seen me steeped, despite your second mother's tenderness, whom I could not cherish too dearly. Yes, when you will have read the last and solemn words of Victoria, the Mother of the Camps, dreadful words, you will then understand that, however painful may be to me the past that will throw a shadow over my path until death, the future that is perhaps in store for Gaul by the mysterious will of Hesus, must fill me with still greater anguish--and you will share my anguish, my son, when you reflect over the wise and profound observation of our ancestor Sylvest: "Alas, every time the nation is wounded the family bleeds." Aye, if Victoria was endowed with the science of foreseeing the future, as so many of our venerable female druids have been before her; if ever her redoubtable prophecies are verified--then, woe is Gaul! Woe is our race! Woe is our family! A longer period of even more cruel sufferings will lie before our country under the yoke of the Rome of the Bishops than it experienced under the yoke of the Rome of the Caesars and the Emperors! As I said before, I now resume the thread of my narrative where I dropped it several years ago. After an extensive conversation on the events of the day, Victorin and his mother returned to Mayence, where they arrived late in the evening. Pretending great fatigue and some pain from the light wound that he received, the young general retired. The moment he reached his house he threw off his armor, and wrapping himself in his cloak repaired to the Bohemian girls. "That woman will be fatal to you," were my words to the young general on our way from the battle field. Alas! My foresight was destined to prove true. By the way of these creatures, keep in mind, my son, a circumstance with which I later became acquainted; you will presently appreciate its importance--those Bohemian girls came to Mayence two days after the arrival of Tetrik in the same town, and they arrived from Gascony, the department that he governed. This discovery, together with many others, imparted to me such accurate information on certain facts that I am enabled to describe them the same as if I had been present. As I said, Victorin left his house at night to keep his assignation with Kidda, the Bohemian girl. He had met her only the previous evening for the first time. She made a deep impression upon him. He was young, handsome, bright and generous. That very day he had won a glorious battle. He was well aware of the easy morals of those strolling singers, who, in effect, were nothing but courtesans. He felt certain that he would possess the object of this latest whim. How great must his surprise have been when Kidda said to him with well simulated firmness, sadness and repressed passion: