"My name, in a shrill scream, reached my ear. I involuntarily opened my eyes again and saw, stretched toward me, the naked, fettered, arm of the gray-haired woman. 'Curses on you, Gelimer!' she shrieked. 'Curses on you upon earth and in hell! Curses on all you Asdings! Curses on the Vandal people and kingdom! God's vengeance for your own and your fathers' sins shall pursue you from childhood to old age. Curses, curses on you, murderer Gelimer!' And I saw her eyes, horribly disfigured by suffering and hate, piercing mine. Then I sank down in the convulsions which, later, often attacked me, and lay gasping under the burden of the thought: even though I myself am free from sin, the despairing woman cursed me as she died; she bore the curse to the throne of God. I must bear the burden of guilt of all our family." He trembled, beads of perspiration stood on his brow. "For God's sake, brother, stop! Your illness might return." But Gelimer continued: "When I came to my senses, I was no longer a youth; I was an old man; or crushed, half mad, as you will call it. I threw off my sword-belt, helmet, shield, and all my weapons, and--oh, never shall I forget it--that one terrible word alone pressed through my poor brain, deadening all else: 'Sin--the curse of sin rests upon me, my family, my people!' "I sought comfort. I seized the Bible. I had been taught that God speaks to us through the oracles of the Sacred Book. With a sharp dagger in my hand I unrolled the passages of Holy Writ. I appealed to God. 'O Lord, wilt Thou really punish me for the sins of my ancestors?' I struck haphazard with my dagger at the open page; it pierced the verse: 'For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.' "I almost died of terror. Once more I controlled myself. From the street below rose the blast of the Vandal horns; glittering in brilliant armor, our horsemen were going out to battle with the Moors. That was my joy, my pride. Twice already I myself had mingled in the victorious conflict. My heart, my courage, my joy in life, revived. I said to myself: 'Even though all pleasure is forever dead to me, my people, the Vandal kingdom, the hero's duty to live, to fight, to die for his country, summon me. Is this, too, nothing? Is sin, too, an idle nothing?' Again, in another place, I questioned the word of God. I closed the roll, opened it again, and my dagger's point touched the words: All is vanity! "Then I sank down in despair. So people and country and heroism, which our ancestors had fostered and praised as at once the highest duty and the greatest pleasure,--this, too, is vanity, is sin before the eyes of the Lord." "It is a cruel chance," said Gibamund, wrathfully.