"And why did your love for me decline?" Victorin interrupted, struck by the solemn tone of the old soldier. "Why, pray, did your love for me decline?" "Because we respected you less. But if you have faults, we also have ours; to-day's battle proves it to us. We have come to make the admission to you." "Let us hear it," replied Victorin affectionately; "let us hear what are my faults and which are yours!" "Your faults, Victorin, are these--you love too much, much more than is meet, both wine and pretty girls!" "By all the sweethearts that you have had, my old Douarnek, by all the cups that you have emptied and that you will still empty, why such words on the evening of a battle that we have won?" merrily answered Victorin, who was slowly returning to his natural weakness, now no longer held under by concern for the battle. "In truth! There was no need for you and your comrades to put yourselves to the trouble of reproaching me with my peccadillos. Speak up frankly, are these reproaches that are usual from soldier to soldier?" "From soldier to soldier, no, Victorin!" resumed Douarnek with severity, "but from soldier to general, yes! We freely chose you our chief; we must speak freely to you! The more we have loved you, you, young man, the more we have honored you, all the more are we entitled to say to you: Keep yourself at the height of your mission!" "I endeavor to, brave Douarnek, by fighting at my best, by leading our legions in the hottest of the fray." "All is not said when one has done his duty in battle. You are not a captain only, you are also a Chief of Gaul!" "Be it so! But why, in the name of all the devils, do you imagine, my brave Douarnek, that as a general and a Chief of Gaul I should be less sensitive than a soldier to the splendor of two beautiful black or blue eyes, or to the bouquet of good old white or red wine?" "The man chosen by free men should, even in matters that appertain to his private life, observe wise moderation if he wishes to be beloved, obeyed and respected. Have you observed such moderation? No! And accordingly, having seen you swallow a pea, we have believed you capable of gulping down an ox. It is in that that we did wrong!" "What! My boys!" the young general replied smiling. "Did you really think I had such a maw as to be able to swallow a whole ox?" "We often saw you in your cups--we knew you to be a runner after girls. We were told that on one occasion, being intoxicated, you violated a woman, a tavern-keeper's wife on one of the isles of the Rhine, who thereupon killed herself in despair. We believed the story. Were we perhaps mistaken in that?" "Malediction!" cried Victorin indignantly and with grief depicted on his face. "And you believed such a thing of my mother's son!"