At Victoria's call I presented myself, crying:

"Sister, I no longer say as I once did: 'I suspect this man!' To-day I accuse the criminal!"

"Schanvoch!" answered Tetrik disdainfully, "your accusations are stale. This is not the first time that such silly words have dropped before my contempt—"

"I formerly only suspected you, Tetrik," I said determinedly, "of having by your machinations brought on the death of Victorin and his son, who was still in his cradle. To-day I accuse you of that horrible plot. I prefer against you the charge of murder!"

"Take care!" Tetrik answered pale, somber and with a threatening gesture. "Take care! My power is great—I can annihilate you—"

"Brother," Victoria said to me, "your thought is mine—speak without fear—I also have power."

"Tetrik," I proceeded, "I once only suspected you of being at the bottom of Marion's assassination—to-day I accuse you of that crime also!"

"Crazy wretch! Where are the proofs of the charges that you have the audacity to hurl at me?"

"Those are idle words," answered Tetrik with icy coolness. "Your proofs, where are they! I laugh at your impotent threats."

"The proofs!" cried Victoria. "They are embodied in your sacrilegious propositions. You conceived the project of being the hereditary emperor of Gaul long before Victorin's death; your proposition of having my grandson acclaimed the heir of his father's office was a lure meant at once to lead me off the scent of your designs and to furnish the first step of the ladder that you meant to climb."

"Victoria, anger is blinding you! What a bungler would I have been—if, indeed, the ambitious object that I pursued was a hereditary throne for myself—to advise you to vest the power in your own stock—"

"Aye! For one thing, the principle would have been accepted by the army. For another, once hereditary power was established for the future, you would have rid yourself of my son and grandson, in the manner that you did—by assassination. It is all now clear before me. That cursed Bohemian girl was your instrument; she was sent to Mayence in order to seduce my son, in order to drive him with her refusals to the infamous act that the creature demanded as the price of her favors. The crime once committed, my son would either be killed by Schanvoch, who was hastily called back to Mayence that very night, or he would be slain by the army, which received timely notice and was lashed to fury by your emissaries—"

"Proofs—proofs—Victoria! Proofs!"

"Proofs!" broke in Tetrik impassibly. "Furnish the proofs!"

The vehemence of the accusations of my foster-sister notwithstanding, Tetrik maintained his habitual composure. For a moment he had dropped the mask and flown at me with threats. Now he was himself again. Raising his hands heavenward, he answered with the most unctuous voice that he could summon:

"Victoria, I considered the project that I submitted to you advantageous to Gaul—let us drop it. You accuse me; I am ready to answer for my acts before the senate and the army. Should my death, decreed at your instigation, be of any service to my country, I shall not refuse to you the few days of life that are still left to me. I shall await the decision of the senate. Adieu, Victoria. The future will tell which of us two, you or I, understood the country's interests better, and loved Gaul with the wiser love."

Saying this he took a step toward the door. I dashed forward ahead of him, barred his passage and said:

"You shall not go out! You mean to flee from the punishment that is due to your crimes—"

"What! In your house, violence is attempted upon an old man! Upon a relative who comes to you unsuspecting—"

"I shall respect that which is considered sacred in all countries—hospitality," answered the Mother of the Camps. "You came to me freely, you shall go out freely."

"Sister!" I cried. "Be careful! Your confidence has proved fatal once before—"

Victoria interrupted me with a gesture, and said bitterly:

"You are right—my confidence has been fatal to the country; it weighs upon my heart with remorse—but fear not this time."

Saying this she rang the bell. Mora entered almost immediately. Her mistress whispered a few words in her ear and the servant quickly went out again.

"Tetrik," Victoria proceeded, "I have sent for Captain Paul and several officers. They will come here for you. They will accompany you to your lodging—you shall not leave the place but to appear before your judges."

"My judges! Who are to be my judges?"

"The army will appoint a tribunal—that tribunal will judge you."

"I can be tried only by the senate."

"If the military tribunal finds you guilty, you will then be sent before the senate; if the military tribunal acquits you, you will be free. Only divine vengeance will then be able to reach you."

"Schanvoch," Victoria said to me, "did you hear well the conversation that I had with Tetrik?"

"Perfectly. I lost not one word."

"Transcribe it faithfully."

And turning to the Chief of Gaul she said:

"That will be the indictment that I shall bring against you. It shall be read before the military tribunal that is to sit in judgment upon you."

"Victoria," Tetrik replied calmly, "listen to the advice of an old man, who once was and still is your best friend. It is an easy thing to accuse a man, but to prove his crime is a more difficult affair—"

"Hold your tongue, detestable hypocrite!" cried Victoria angrily. "Drive me not to extremes—"

And clasping her hands:

"Hesus! Give me the strength to be equitable towards this man. Calm down in me, Oh, Hesus! the ebullitions of anger that might unsettle my judgment!"

Having heard steps behind the door, Mora opened it, and returned to her mistress, saying:

"Captain Paul has arrived."

Victoria made a sign to Tetrik to leave the room. He stepped out heaving a profound sigh and saying in penetrating accents:

When the room was cleared of the presence of Tetrik the Mother of the Camps said to her servant, just as the latter was about to leave close upon the heels of Tetrik:

"Mora, my breast is afire. Bring me a cup of water with some honey, to cool me and slake my thirst."

The servant hurriedly nodded her head and vanished with Tetrik, who lingered for a moment at the threshold.

"Oh, my brother!" murmured Victoria despondently when we were again alone. "My long struggle with that man has exhausted me—the sight of evil lames my energies—I feel broken—"

"Want of sleep, excitement, the horror that the sight of Tetrik inspired you with—all this has rendered you feverish. Take a little rest, sister; I shall instantly transcribe your conversation with the man. This very evening justice will be done."

"You are right; I think that if I could sleep a while I should feel relieved. Go, brother, but do not leave the house."

"Would you like Sampso to keep you company?"

"No, I prefer to be alone."

"Schanvoch!" she cried panting for breath. "Come! Come quick! Drop your writing! Hasten to my mistress!"

"What is the matter! What has happened?"

"My mistress. Oh! Woe! Woe! Come quick!"

"Victoria! Does any danger threaten her?" I cried, hurrying to the apartment of my foster-sister, while Mora followed me, saying:

"She sent me out of the room—she wanted to be alone. A minute ago I went in—and, woe is me! I saw my poor mistress—"

"Finish speaking—you saw Victoria—"

"I saw her lying on her bed—her eyes open—but they were fixed—she seemed dead—"

I shall never forget the frightful sight that struck my eyes as I stepped into Victoria's chamber. As Mora said, she lay stretched upon her bed motionless, livid, like a corpse. Her fixed, yet sparkling eyes, seemed to have sunk into their orbits; her features, painfully contracted, were of the cold whiteness of marble. A sinister thought flashed through my mind like lightning—Victoria was dying of poison!

The servant rushed out. I took one of Victoria's hands. It was limp and icy.

"Sister! It is I!" I cried—"Schanvoch!"

"Brother," she murmured.

As I heard her muffled, feeble voice, methought the answer proceeded from the bottom of a tomb. A moment later, her eyes, that until then were fixed, turned slowly towards me. The divine intelligence that formerly illumined the beautiful, august and sweet look of my foster-sister seemed extinguished. Nevertheless, by degrees, she recovered consciousness, and said:

"Is it you—brother? I am dying—"

Tossing her head painfully from one side to the other as if seeking something, she made an effort to raise her arm; it dropped immediately beside her; she then proceeded to say:

"See yonder large trunk—open it—you will find in it—a bronze casket—bring it to me—"

I did as I was bid, and deposited a rather heavy bronze casket near her on the couch. At that moment Sampso, whom Mora notified of Victoria's condition, came in.

"Sampso," said Victoria, "take this casket—take it away with you—keep it carefully locked—open it in three days—the key is tied to the lid."

And addressing me:

"Did you transcribe Tetrik's conversation with me?"

"I was just finishing it when Mora ran in to me."

"Sampso, take that casket away to your room immediately, and bring me the parchment on which Schanvoch has just been writing. Go, we have not a minute to spare!"

"Brother," she said to me, "every minute is precious. Listen to what I have to say to you without interrupting me. I feel that I am dying; I think I know the hand that smote me, without her being herself aware of what she was doing. This crime caps a long series of dark and felonious deeds. My death is at this moment a grave danger to Gaul. We must avert the danger. You are known in the army—my confidence in you is known—call the officers and soldiers together—inform them of Tetrik's schemes. The conversation that you transcribed will be signed by me, in order to verify your words. My life is ebbing fast. Oh! If I but had the time to gather here around my death-bed the officers of the army who this very evening will surround my funeral pyre. Upon that pyre I wish you to lay the arms of my father, my husband and Victorin, also the cradle of my little grandson!"

"Schanvoch!" cried Sampso precipitately entering the room, "The parchments that you left upon the table—have disappeared. But I saw them lying on your desk when Mora came in to call me. They must have been taken away since."

These last words wholly exhausted Victoria's strength. Still she made one more effort in her divine exaltation. She raised her eyes to heaven, crossed her arms over her breast, heaved a long sigh, and fell back upon her couch.

The Mother of the Camps, Victoria the Great, was dead!

While she spoke I made superhuman efforts to control my despair. When, however, I saw her expire, I became dizzy, my knees sank under me, my strength, my thoughts fled. I lost consciousness, but I still recollect the sound of many voices and a great tumult in the contiguous apartment whence I heard distinctly the words:

For several days I lay at death's door, constantly attended, my son, by your second mother. About two weeks passed after the death of Victoria, before I was able to collect and co-ordinate my recollections, and speak with Sampso of our irreparable loss. The last words that struck my ears when, broken with grief, I wholly lost consciousness beside the death-bed of my foster-sister were these:

"Tetrik, the Chief of Gaul, is in his death agony—he is dying of poison."

Indeed Tetrik was, or rather seemed to have been, poisoned at the same time as Victoria. He had hardly stepped into the house of the general of the army, when he seemed seized with severe pangs. When two weeks later I myself returned to life, the life of Tetrik was still despaired of.

I must admit I was stupefied at the strange information; my reason refused to believe the man guilty of a crime of which he was himself a victim.

A medal, struck on the very day of the funeral ceremony, represents, on its obverse, the head of the Gallic heroine, casqued as Minerva, and on its reverse, an eagle with outstretched wings flying into space with its eyes fixed upon the sun, the symbol of the druid faith—the soul leaving this world and flying towards the unknown world where it is to be clad in 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 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.

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:

"The crimes and plots that you accuse Tetrik of are so monstrous, they would bespeak so infernal a soul, that I would hardly believe them, even if they were attested by Victoria herself, our august mother, whom we can never forget. Schanvoch, you are a brave and honest soldier, but your deposition will not suffice to bring the Chief of Gaul to the bar of the senate and the army. Besides, Tetrik is himself about to die; even his own poisoning proves to a certainty that he is innocent of Victoria's death. You would be the only witness against the Chief of Gaul, who has been loved and venerated up to now, seeing that he has always conducted himself as the first subject of Victoria, the real empress of the nation. Take my advice, Schanvoch, invigorate your spirit, that the sudden death of this august woman has so severely shaken. It may be that, shocked by the disaster, your judgment is led astray, and mistakes vague apprehensions for facts. Until now, Tetrik has governed Gaul wisely, thanks to the inspiration of our august Mother. If he dies, he will be regretted by us; if he survives the mysterious crime which he has himself narrowly escaped, we shall continue to honor the man who was pointed out to us by Victoria herself as the fit object of our choice."

The general's answer proved to me that I would never succeed in causing the senate and the army to share my suspicions and convictions, both being so thoroughly prejudiced in favor of the Chief of Gaul.

I then realized how utterly futile it would be to press my accusations against Tetrik. With my heart rent at seeing the fate of Gaul in the hands of a man whom I knew for a traitor, I decided to leave Treves with you, my son, and Sampso, your second mother, and repair to Brittany, the country of our family's nativity, there to seek some consolation for my sorrows.

Nevertheless I felt bound to fulfil what I considered a sacred duty. By dint of constantly interrogating my memory on the subject of the conversation between Tetrik and Victoria, I succeeded in transcribing it a second time, word for word. Of this I made a second copy, and on the eve of my departure took the first draft to the general of the army.

"You are of the opinion," I said to him, "that my reason wanders—keep this narrative—I hope the future may not prove to you the truth of my accusation."

On leaving the general of the army I walked home disconsolate. Crime was triumphant. I returned home, to the house of my foster-sister, where I remained until my departure for Brittany. I was engaged with Sampso packing up the last articles needed on our journey, when the following unlooked-for events happened on that night.

Mora, the servant, had also remained in the house. The woman's grief at her mistress's death touched my heart. On the night that I am writing about, my son, while engaged with your second mother in the preparations for our journey, we found that we needed another trunk. I went downstairs in search of one into a room that was separated from Mora's chamber by a rough wooden partition. It was past midnight. Upon entering the room where the trunk was, I noticed, to my no slight astonishment, that a bright light shone from the servant's room through the clefts of the partition. Fearing that the woman's bed might have taken fire while she slept, I hastened to peep through the clefts in the boards. I bounded back with astonishment, but quickly returned to my place of observation.

I recognized Kidda, the Bohemian girl.

Alas! I had seen the creature only once, and then only by the light of the moon, on that fateful night, when, suddenly recalled to Mayence by the mysterious notification given me by my traveling companion, I slew Victorin in my house, together with my beloved wife Ellen.

Rage followed close upon the heels of my stupor—a horrible suspicion flashed through my mind. I bolted from the inside the room in which I was; with a violent thrust of my shoulder—rage multiplied my strength a hundredfold—I broke down one of the boards of the partition, and suddenly I stood before the eyes of the startled Bohemian. With one hand I seized her and threw her upon her knees, with the other I took one of the two heavy iron lamps, and raising it over the woman's head I cried:

"I shall shatter your skull if you do not immediately confess your crimes!"

Kidda believed she read the decree of her death in my face. She grew livid and murmured:

"Kill me not! I shall speak!"

"You are Kidda, the Bohemian girl?"

"Yes—I am Kidda."

"Yes—that is so!"

"You were acting under orders of Tetrik?"

"No, I never spoke to him."

"Whose orders were you, then, following?"

"Of Tetrik's equerry."

"The man is cautious," I thought to myself. "And the soldier who on that fateful night announced to me that a heinous crime was being perpetrated in my house—do you know who he was?"

"It was Captain Marion's companion in arms, he was a former blacksmith, like Marion."

"Did Tetrik also know that soldier?"

"No, it was Tetrik's equerry who had secret conferences with him at Mayence."

"And where is that soldier now?"

"He died."

"After Tetrik employed him to assassinate Captain Marion?"

The girl looked puzzled.

"Did Tetrik cause him to be put to death? Answer!"

"I think so!"

"And it is that same equerry who sent you to this house under the guise of Mora, the Mauritanian? Was it in order to disguise yourself that you painted your face?"

"Yes—that is all so."

"You were to spy upon your mistress, were you not?—and then poison her? Speak! If you believe in a God—if your infernal soul dares at this supreme moment to implore his help—you have but a minute to live—Speak!"

"Confess your crime—you committed it under orders of Tetrik? Speak!"

"Yes, I was ordered by Tetrik."

"When—how did he give you the order to execute that crime?"

"When I entered the room the second time—after I was sent to bring Captain Paul, who was to arrest Tetrik."

"And the poison—you poured it into the drink that you were to present to your mistress?"

"Yes—it happened that way."

"And on that same day," I added, my recollections now thronging to my mind, "when I sent you to my wife, you purloined a parchment that lay on my table and that I had written upon?"

"Yes, Tetrik ordered me to—he heard Victoria refer to the parchment."

"Why, after the crime was committed, did you stay in this house down to to-day?"

"So as to awaken no suspicions."

"What induced you to poison your mistress?"

"The gift of these jewels that I was entertaining myself with putting on when you broke in upon me. I thought I was alone!"

"Tetrik came himself near dying of the poison—do you believe his equerry is guilty of that crime?"

"Every poison has its counter-poison," answered the Bohemian with a sinister smile. "He who poisons others, removes suspicion from himself by drinking from the same cup, and he is safe through the counter-poison."

To seize a scarf that lay upon the bed, and, despite the resistance that she offered, to tie her hands firmly together and to lock her up in one of the lower rooms, was the affair of but an instant. I ran back to the general of the army. After finally succeeding in being admitted to his presence—a difficult thing owing to the hour of the night—I repeated to him the confession that Kidda had just made to me. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently and said:

"Ever this same, rooted, thought—your mind must be wholly deranged. The idea of having me waked up to hear such crazy man's stories. Moreover, you have chosen ill the hour to prefer such charges against the venerable Tetrik. He left Treves last evening for Bordeaux."

The departure of Tetrik was a heavy blow to my last hopes. Nevertheless, I pressed the general with such insistence, I spoke to him with such earnestness and coherence, that he consented to order one of his officers to accompany me back to the house, and take the Bohemian girl's confession in writing. He and I returned hurriedly to the house. I opened the door of the chamber in which I had left Kidda with her hands tied. She was gone! She must have gnawed at the scarf with her teeth, and fled by one of the windows that now stood open and that looked into the garden. In my hurry and the seething confusion of my brain I had omitted to guard against the chances of the woman's escape by that issue.

And without caring to listen to me any longer he left.

The will of God be done! I now renounced all hope of uncovering the crimes of Tetrik. The next day I left the city of Treves with you and Sampso, and took the road for Brittany.

You will read, alas! with no little grief and apprehension, my son, the few lines with which I shall close this narrative. You will see how our old Gaul, after having fully reacquired her freedom by dint of three centuries of continuous struggle, after having become great and powerful under the influence of Victoria, was again to fall, not, it is true, completely under the yoke, but at least enfeoffed to the Roman Emperors through the infamous treachery of Tetrik.

"The favorable moment for an attack upon Gaul has arrived. You will prevail easily over a people that is weakened by internal dissensions, and an army, one division of which is jealous of the other. I shall notify you in advance of how the Gallic troops are distributed, and also of their moves, in order to insure the prospects of your triumph."

Alas! my son, the history of our fathers will teach you that one day, three hundred years ago, another Gaul also marched before the triumphal chariot of a Roman Emperor, Caesar. That Gaul did not march in brilliant array, with audacious mien and with smiles for his vanquisher. That captive was loaded with chains, he was clad in rags, and was hardly able to walk; he was that day taken out of the dungeon where he had languished four years after having defended the freedom of Gaul inch by inch against the victorious armies of the great Caesar. That captive, one of the most heroic martyrs of our country and our independence, was called Vercingetorix, the Chief of the Hundred Valleys.

After the triumphal march of Caesar, the head of the valiant defender of Gaul was cut off.

After the triumphal march of Aurelian, Tetrik, the renegade who delivered his country to the foreigner, was led with pomp to a splendid palace, the price of his sacrilegious treason.

The narrative of my father Amael's great-grandfather Schanvoch on the events that transpired in Gaul—after the death of Victoria the Great, during the time that, living retiredly in Brittany on the fields of our ancestors that he bought back from a Roman colonist, he quietly spent his life with his son Alguen and his second wife Sampso—ends here.

My great-great-grandfather Schanvoch died peaceably in our house, situated near the sacred stones of Karnak. He left the narrative that he wrote, and the casque's lark, given him by Victoria, together with the previous narratives of our family and the relics that accompany them, to his son Alguen. After a long and peaceful life Alguen died, three hundred and forty years after our ancestress Genevieve saw Jesus of Nazareth perish on the cross. Alguen's son Roderik, my grandfather, inherited from his father both our family records and relics, and a quiet, peaceful and contented life, all of which he bequeathed to his son, my father Amael, who in turn bequeathed them to me, Gildas.

I then, Gildas, make this entry to-day in our family annals three hundred and seventy-five years after the death of Jesus. I feel sad on this occasion. My father had intended to add a few words to our family annals. He postponed doing so from day to day, seeing there was nothing that he desired to make particular mention of to our descendants, his life being the uneventful one of a quiet, industrious and obscure husbandman. Two days ago my father died. He died in our own house, near the stones of Karnak, after a short illness.

Several of our ancestors, during the darksome days of their enslavement to Rome, and when they were steeped in ignorance and misery, recorded on our family parchments that such was the leaden uniformity of their days, spent by them from dawn to dusk, in oppressive labors, that they had nothing to say except: "I was born, I have lived and I shall die in the sorrows of slavery." May it please the gods that the happiness of the generations that are to follow me be in turn, so uniform, that each of my descendants may, as I do now, have nothing to add to our family chronicles but these lines with which I shall close my narrative:

"I have lived happy, peaceful and obscure in our Armorican Brittany cultivating our ancestral fields with the help of my family. I shall depart from this world without fear or regret when it will please Hesus to call me away to live again in yonder unknown worlds."

I am now aged eighteen years. The family relics in my possession consist of Hena's gold sickle, Guilhern's little brass bell, Sylvest's iron collar, Genevieve's silver cross, and the casque's lark of Schanvoch.

THE END.