CHAPTER VIII.
CRIME TRIUMPHANT.
For several days I lay at death's door, constantly attended, my son, byyour second mother. About two weeks passed after the death of Victoria,before I was able to collect and co-ordinate my recollections, and speakwith Sampso of our irreparable loss. The last words that struck my earswhen, broken with grief, I wholly lost consciousness beside thedeath-bed of my foster-sister were these:
"Tetrik, the Chief of Gaul, is in his death agony--he is dying ofpoison."
Indeed Tetrik was, or rather seemed to have been, poisoned at the sametime as Victoria. He had hardly stepped into the house of the general ofthe army, when he seemed seized with severe pangs. When two weeks laterI myself returned to life, the life of Tetrik was still despaired of.
I must admit I was stupefied at the strange information; my reasonrefused to believe the man guilty of a crime of which he was himself avictim.
Victoria's death threw the city of Treves, the army, and later the wholenation into consternation. The funeral of the august Mother of the Campsseemed to be the funeral of Gaul herself. In her sudden taking-offpeople saw the presage of new evils to the country. The Gallic senatedecreed the apotheosis of Victoria. It was celebrated at Treves in themidst of universal sorrow and tears. The pompous solemnity of the druidcult, the chant of the bards, imparted imposing splendor to theceremony. Embalmed and lying on an ivory couch covered with cloth ofgold, Victoria lay in state to the veneration of the citizens whocrowded in mass to the house of mourning. The place was constantlyinvaded by that army of the Rhine of which Victoria was truly themother. Finally her remains were placed upon the pyre, agreeable to thecustom of our fathers. Incense rose along the streets of Treves, crossedby the funeral procession, which was headed by the bards singing ontheir golden harps the praises of the illustrious woman. The pyre wasthen set on fire and disappeared in a sheet of flame.
A medal, struck on the very day of the funeral ceremony, represents, onits obverse, the head of the Gallic heroine, casqued as Minerva, and onits reverse, an eagle with outstretched wings flying into space with itseyes fixed upon the sun, the symbol of the druid faith--the soul leavingthis world and flying towards the unknown world where it is to be cladin a new body. Under the symbol the ordinary formula was engraved:"Consecration," followed below by these words:
VICTORIA, EMPEROR.
By that virile appellation Gaul immortalized in her enthusiasm theglorious Mother of the Camps, and wreathed her memory in a title thatshe had steadily declined during life--a life that was at once modestand sublime, and wholly consecrated to her father, her husband, her sonand to the glory and welfare of her country.
My perplexity was profound. The poisoning of Tetrik, who, as it wasclaimed, still struggled with death, the disappearance of theparchments that contained the traitor's conversation with Victoria, andwhich she was thereby prevented from signing before dying--all thesecircumstances rendered the prosecution of the traitor difficult, if notimpossible. An accusation lodged by me, an obscure soldier, againstTetrik, who survived as the supreme Chief of Gaul, and whose power wasnow all the greater, seeing it was no longer counterbalanced by the vastinfluence of the Mother of the Camps, could not lead to favorableresults. Before deciding upon a final course in the matter, I waited formy shattered frame and mind to recover their former vigor.
Three days after Victoria's death, and obedient to the last wishes ofthe Mother of the Camps, Sampso opened the casket that Victoria gaveher. In it my wife found a last touching proof of the thoughtfulness ofmy foster-sister. There was a parchment with these words inscribed inher 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.
You have often shown to me the pious relics of your family--I wish to join to them a souvenir of my own. You will find in this casket a bronze lark. I wore that ornament on my casque the day of the battle of Riffenel, at which I saw my son Victorin flash his virgin sword. I wish that you and your family may continue to keep this memento of our fraternal friendship. It is left to you by your foster-sister Victoria; she is of your family--did she not drink the milk of your brave mother?
When you read these lines, my good brother Schanvoch, I shall have been re-born beyond, near those whom I have loved.
Persevere in your fidelity to Gaul and the faith of our fathers. You have approved yourself worthy of your family. May your descendants approve themselves worthy of you, and write, without having to blush, the history of their lives, as Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, has desired them to do.
VICTORIA.