THE STORY OF SYOMARA.
The storm of questions had spent itself and the thirst for fresh stories
returned among the assembled family of Joel, whose head remarked with
wonderment: "What a thing traveling is? How much one learns; but we must
not lag behind our guest. Story for story. Proud Gallic woman for proud
Gallic woman. Friend guest, ask Mamm' Margarid to tell you the beautiful
story and deed of one of her own female ancestors, which happened about
a hundred and thirty years ago when our fathers went as far as Asia to
found a new Gaul, because you must know that few are the countries on
earth that their soles have not trod upon."
"After your wife's story," answered the stranger, "and seeing that you
wish to speak of our own ancestors, I shall also speak of them ... and
by Ritha Gaur!... never would the time be fitter. While we are here
telling stories, you do not seem to know what is going on elsewhere in
the land; you do not know that perhaps at this very moment--"
"Why do you interrupt yourself?" asked Joel wondering at the suddenness
with which his guest broke off in the middle of the sentence. "What is
going on while we are here telling stories? What better can we do at the
corner of our hearth during an autumn evening?"
Instead of answering Joel, the stranger respectfully said to Mamm'
Margarid:
"I shall listen to the story of Joel's wife."
"It is a very short and simple story," answered Margarid plying her
distaff. "The story is as simple as the action of my ancestral
grandmother. Her name was Syomara."
"And in honor of her," said Guilhern breaking in upon his mother and
proudly pointing the stranger to an eight year old child of surprising
beauty, "in honor of our ancestral grandmother Syomara, who was as
beautiful as she was brave, I have given her name to this little girl of
mine."
"This is indeed a most charming child," remarked the stranger struck by
the lovely face of little Syomara. "I am sure she will have her
grandmother's valor in the same degree that she is endowed with her
beauty."
Henory, the child's mother blushed with joy at these words and said
smiling to Mamm' Margarid:
"I dare not blame Guilhern for having interrupted you; it brought on the
pretty compliment."
"The compliment is as sweet to me as to you, my daughter," answered
Mamm' Margarid; saying which she began her story:
"My grandmother's name was Syomara; she was the daughter of Ronan. Her
father had taken her into lower Languedoc whither his traffic called
him. The Gauls of the neighborhood were just preparing for the
expedition to the East. Their chief, Oriegon by name, saw my
grandmother, was fascinated by her beauty, won her love and married her.
Syomara departed with her husband on the expedition to the East. At
first they triumphed. Afterwards, the Romans, who were ever jealous of
the Gallic possessions, attacked our fathers. In one of the battles,
Syomara, who, led thereto both by duty and love, accompanied Oriegon,
her husband, to battle in a war-chariot, was separated from her husband
during the fray, taken prisoner, and placed under the guard of a Roman
officer, who was a miser and a libertine. The Roman, who was captivated
by the beauty of Syomara, attempted to seduce her; but she repelled his
advances with contempt. He then surprised his captive during her sleep
and outraged her--"
"Listen, Joel!" cried the stranger indignantly. "Listen to that!... A
Roman subjects an ancestor of your wife to such indignity!"
"Listen to the end of the story, friend guest," said Joel; "you will see
that Syomara is the peer of the Gallic woman of the Rhine."
"The one and the other," Margarid proceeded, "showed themselves true to
the maxim that there are three kinds of chastity among the women of
Gaul: The first, when a father says in the presence of his daughter that
he grants her hand to him whom she loves; the second, when for the first
time she enters her husband's bed; and the third, when she appears the
next morning before other men. The Roman had outraged Syomara, his
prisoner. His passion being satisfied, he offered her freedom upon
payment of a ransom. She accepted the offer and induced the Roman to
send her servant, a prisoner like herself, to the camp of the Gauls and
tell Oriegon or, in his absence, any of his friends, to bring the ransom
to an appointed place. The servant departed to the camp of the Gauls.
The miserly Roman, wishing himself to receive the ransom and not share
it with anyone else, led Syomara alone to the appointed place. The
friends of Oriegon were there with the gold for the ransom. While the
Roman was counting the gold, Syomara addressed the Gauls in their own
tongue and ordered them to kill the infamous man. Her orders were
executed on the spot. Syomara then cut off his head, placed it in a fold
of her dress and returned to the camp of her people. Oriegon, who had
himself been also taken prisoner and managed to escape, arrived in camp
at the same time as his wife. At the sight of her husband, Syomara
dropped the head of the Roman at his feet and addressed Oriegon saying:
'That is the head of a man who outraged me.... There is none but you who
can say that he possessed me.'"
At the close of her narrative, Mamm' Margarid continued to spin in
silence.
"Did I not tell you, friend," said Joel, "that Syomara, Margarid's
grandmother, was the peer of your Gallic woman of the Rhine?"
"And must not the noble name bring good luck to my daughter!" added
Guilhern tenderly kissing the blonde head of the child.
"That powerful and chaste story is worthy of the lips that told it,"
said the stranger. "It also proves that the Romans, our implacable
enemies, have not changed. Avaricious and debauched were they once--and
are to-day. And seeing that we are speaking of the avaricious and
debauched Romans and that you love stories," he added with a bitter
smile, "you must know that I have been in Rome ... and that I saw ...
Julius Caesar ... the most famous of the Roman generals, as also the most
avaricious and the most debauched man of all Italy. I would not venture
to speak of his infamous acts of libertinage before women and young
girls."
"Oh! Did you see that famous Julius Caesar? What kind of a looking man is
he?" asked Joel with great inquisitiveness.
The stranger looked at the brenn as if greatly surprised at the
question, and answered with an effort to suppress his anger:
"Caesar is nearing old age; he is tall of stature; his face is lean and
long; his complexion pale; his eyes black; his head bald. Seeing the man
combines in his person all the vices of the worst women of the Romans,
he is possessed, like them, of extraordinary personal vanity.
Accordingly, in order to conceal his baldness, he ever carries a chaplet
of gold leaves on his head. Is your inquisitiveness satisfied, Joel?
Would you want more details about Caesar's infirmities? That he is
subject to epileptic fits?... That--"
But the stranger did not finish his sentence. Letting his eyes wander
over the assembled family of the brenn, he cried with towering rage:
"By the anger of Hesus! Can it be that all of you--as many as you are
here capable of seizing the sabre and the sword but insatiable after
idle stories--can it be you do not know that a Roman army, after having
invaded under the command of Caesar one-half of our provinces, has taken
winter quarters in the country of Orleans, of Touraine and of Anjou?"
"Yes, yes; we have heard about it," calmly said Joel. "People from
Anjou, who came here to buy beef and pork, told us about it."
"And it is with such unconcern that you speak of the Roman invasion of
Gaul?" cried the traveler.
"Never have the Breton Gauls been invaded by strangers," proudly
answered the brenn of the tribe of Karnak. "We shall remain spotless of
the taint. We are independent of the Gauls of Piotou, of Touraine, of
Orleans and of the other sections of the land, just as they are
independent of us. They have not asked for our help. We are not so
constituted as to offer ourselves to their chiefs and to fight under
them. Let everyone guard his own honor and his own province. The Romans
are in Touraine ... but it is a long way from Touraine to here."
"So that if the pirates of the North were to kill your son Albinik the
sailor and his brave wife Meroe, it would no wise concern you because
the murder was committed far from here?"
"You are joking. My son is my son.... The Gauls of provinces other than
mine are not my sons!"
"Are they not, like yourself, the sons of the same god, as the druid
religion teaches you? If that is so, are not all the Gauls your
brothers? And does not the subjugation, does not the blood of a brother
cry for vengeance? Are you unconcerned because the enemy is not at the
very gates of your own homestead? On that principle, the hand, even when
it knows that the foot is gangrened, could say to itself: 'As to me, I
am well, and the foot is far from the hand--I need not worry over the
disease.' And the gangrene, not being stopped, rises from the foot to
the other members, until the whole body perishes."
"Unless the healthy hand take an axe," said the brenn, "and cut off the
foot from which the evil proceeds."
"And what becomes of the body that is thus mutilated, Joel?" put in
Mamm' Margarid who all the while had been listening in silence. "When
the best regions of the country shall have been invaded by the stranger,
what will then become of the rest of Gaul? Thus mutilated and
dismembered, how will she defend herself against her enemies?"
"The worthy spouse of my host speaks wisely," said the traveler
respectfully to Mamm' Margarid; "like all Gallic matrons she holds her
place at the public council as well as at her hearth."
"You speak truly," rejoined Joel, "Margarid has a brave heart and a wise
head. Often her opinion is better than mine.... I gladly say so.... But
this time I am right. Whatever may happen to the rest of Gaul, never
will the Romans set foot in our old Britanny. There are her rocks, her
marshes, her woods, her sand banks--above all her Bretons to defend
her."
At these words of her husband Mamm' Margarid shook her head
disapprovingly; all the men of the family, however, loudly applauded
their brenn's words.