"And these call themselves men! Oh, Hesus!" cried the Mother of the Camps indignantly. "I, a woman--I, a mother--I saw my son and grandson die this very night--and yet I have the necessary fortitude to repress my grief--and this soldier, to whom the most glorious post that can shed luster upon a man is offered, dares to answer with a refusal, giving his love for beer and the polishing of armor as an excuse! Oh! Woe is Gaul, if the very ones whom she regards as her bravest sons thus cowardly forsake her!" The reproach of the Mother of the Camps impressed Captain Marion. He dropped his head in confusion, remained silent for a moment, and then spoke: "Victoria, there is but one strong soul here--it is yours. You make me ashamed of myself. Well, then," he added with a sigh, "be it as you will--I accept. But the gods are my witnesses--I accept as a duty and under protest. If I should commit any asininities as Chief of Gaul, none will have a right to reproach me. Very well, I accept, Victoria, but under two imperative conditions." "What are they?" asked Tetrik. "This is the first," replied Marion: "The Mother of the Camps shall remain in Mayence to help me with her advice. I am as new a hand at my new work as a blacksmith's apprentice who for the first time dips the iron into the brasier." "I promised you that I would, Marion," answered my foster-sister. "I shall remain here as long as you may need my services." "Victoria, if your spirit should withdraw from me, I would be like a body without a soul--accordingly, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know that that promise must cost you a good deal, poor woman. And yet," added the captain with his habitual good nature, "do not run away with the idea that I am so foolishly vainglorious as to imagine that it is to the strong bull of a warrior, named Marion, that Victoria the Great makes the sacrifice of burying her grief in order to guide him. No--no. It is to our old Gaul that she renders the sacrifice. As a good son of my country, I am as thankful for the kind act done to my mother, as if it were done to myself." "Nobly thought and nobly said, Marion," replied Victoria deeply touched by these words of the captain. "Nevertheless, your straightforwardness and sound judgment will soon enable you to dispense with my advice; then," added she with an expression of profound pain that she strove to repress, "I shall be able, like you, Tetrik, to retire and bury myself in some secluded spot with my sorrows." "Alas," replied the governor, "to weep in peace is the only consolation for irreparable losses." "But," he proceeded, addressing the captain, "you referred to two conditions. Victoria has accepted the first; which is the second?" "Oh! As to the second, it is as important to me as the first," and the captain shook his head. "Aye, it is as important as the first--" "And what is it?" asked my foster-sister. "Explain yourself, Marion."