"And whence does your terror proceed?" Tetrik asked. "What is its cause?" "That for three successive centuries Rome was the implacable foe of Gaul," Victoria answered; "that for so many centuries Rome was the merciless scourge of the world!" "Rome?" replied the governor. "Pagan Rome?" "Yes. The tyranny that weighed down upon the world had its seat in Rome," rejoined Victoria. "Now, then, I ask myself, by what strange fatality have the bishops, the Popes of the new creed, who aspire to reign over the universe by ruling the sovereigns of the world, been led to establish the seat of their empire in Rome? Jesus of Nazareth branded the high priests as liars and hypocrites. He preached above all, humility, forgiveness, equality, fraternity among men, and lo! in his apotheosized name, we now see a new hierarchy of high priests arising, pretending to be the rulers of the world, and already, as Pope Etienne, meriting the charges of ambition, deception and intolerance, even from their fellow Christian bishops!" "Is it you, Victoria, who hold such language?" Tetrik interrupted her saying: "You so wise, so enlightened--can you fear the future of Gaul to be endangered by those unhappy people who bear witness to their faith by their martyrdom?" "Oh!" cried the Mother of the Camps with exaltation. "I love, I admire those poor Christians who die in torture while proclaiming the equality of man before God, the liberation of the slaves, the community of goods, love and forgiveness for the guilty! I love, I admire those poor Christians who die on the scaffold and proclaim in the name of Jesus: 'Those are monsters of iniquity who hold their brothers in bondage, who leave them to suffer in cold and hunger, instead of sharing with them their bread and their cloak.' Oh! pity and veneration for those heroic martyrs! But I stand in dread of those people who call themselves the chiefs, the Popes of the Christians. Yes, I stand in dread of those high priests who have fixed upon Rome as the seat of their mysterious empire!--in that city, the center of the most frightful tyranny that has ever crushed down the human race! I fear for the future of Gaul from that quarter." "Victoria," again Tetrik interrupted, saying: "You exaggerate the power of those Christian pontiffs. Have not large numbers of them, persecuted by the Roman Emperors, undergone martyrdom, like any other neophytes?"