The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the CampsSue, Eugène
History
The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps
Sue, Eugène
Gaul -- History -- 58 B.C.-511 A.D. -- Fiction
By that virile appellation Gaul immortalized in her enthusiasm the
glorious Mother of the Camps, and wreathed her memory in a title that
she had steadily declined during life--a life that was at once modest
and sublime, and wholly consecrated to her father, her husband, her son
and to the glory and welfare of her country.
My perplexity was profound. The poisoning of Tetrik, who, as it was
claimed, still struggled with death, the disappearance of the
parchments that contained the traitor's conversation with Victoria, and
which she was thereby prevented from signing before dying--all these
circumstances rendered the prosecution of the traitor difficult, if not
impossible. An accusation lodged by me, an obscure soldier, against
Tetrik, who survived as the supreme Chief of Gaul, and whose power was
now all the greater, seeing it was no longer counterbalanced by the vast
influence of the Mother of the Camps, could not lead to favorable
results. Before deciding upon a final course in the matter, I waited for
my shattered frame and mind to recover their former vigor.
Three days after Victoria's death, and obedient to the last wishes of
the Mother of the Camps, Sampso opened the casket that Victoria gave
her. In it my wife found a last touching proof of the thoughtfulness of
my foster-sister. There was a parchment with these words inscribed in
her own hand:
"We shall never part until death," did we, my good brother
Schanvoch, often say to each other; it is your wish, it is mine;
but if I am called away before you to live in the unknown worlds,
where we shall one day meet again, I shall feel happy on the day
when we shall meet again elsewhere than here, at the thought that
you have gone back to Brittany, the cradle of your family.
The Roman conquest plundered your family of its ancestral fields.
Free once more, Gaul should, in the name of right or by force, have
revanquished the heritage of your children from the descendants of
the Romans. I know not what will be our country's condition, at the
time of our separation. But, hap what hap may, there are three
means by which you will be able to revindicate your just
heritage--right, money or force. You have the right, you have the
force, you have the money--you will find in this casket the
sufficient sum with which to buy back, if need be, the fields that
belonged to your family, and thenceforth live happy and free near
the sacred stones of Karnak, the witnesses of the heroic death of
your ancestress Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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