CAPTAIN MARION.
Early in the morning I repaired to Victoria's residence. The humble
house of the Mother of the Camps was reached through a long narrow path,
skirted on either side by high ramparts that constituted the outer
fortifications of one of the gates of Mayence. I was about twenty paces
from the house when I heard behind me the following cries uttered in
terror:
"Save yourself! Save yourself!"
Looking back, I saw with no little fright a two-wheeled cart dashing
rapidly towards me. The cart was drawn by two horses whose driver had
lost control over them.
I could jump off neither to the right nor the left of the narrow path to
let the cart pass; its wheels almost grazed the opposite walls; I was
still too far from Victoria's residence to hope for escape in that
direction; however swiftly I might run, I would be overtaken by the
horses and trampled under their hoofs long before I could have reached
the door. There was nothing left for me to do but to face the runaways,
and, however hopeless the prospect, to seize them by the bit and attempt
to stop them. Accordingly, I rushed forward upon the animals with my
hands raised. Oh! A prodigy! Hardly did I touch the horses' reins when
they suddenly reared upon their haunches. It was almost as if my mere
gesture had sufficed to check their impetuous course. Happy at having
escaped what seemed certain death, but aware that I was not a magician,
endowed with the power to arrest a runaway team with a mere motion of my
hand, I asked myself while leaping back what the cause might be of the
extraordinary spectacle. I noticed that the horses still made violent
efforts to proceed on their career; they reared, tugged forward and
stretched out their necks, but were unable to advance, as if the cart's
wheels were locked, or some superior power restrained them.
My curiosity stirred to a high pitch, I drew near, and gliding between
the horses and the wall, succeeded in climbing over the dashboard of the
cart whose driver I found crouching under the seat, looking more dead
than alive. As the mystery seemed to deepen, my curiosity was pricked
still more. I ran to the rear of the vehicle and noticed with no slight
amazement that a large sized man, robust as a Hercules, was clinging to
two ornamental pieces that projected from the rear of the cart. It was
thanks to his weight, and to the superhuman resistance that his great
strength enabled him to offer, that the team was held back.
"Captain Marion!" I cried. "I should have known as much! There is none
other in the whole Gallic army able to hold back a cart going at full
speed."
"Tell that fool of a driver to pull in the reins. My wrists begin to
tire."
I was transmitting the orders to the driver who was beginning to recover
his senses, when I saw several soldiers, on guard at Victoria's
dwelling, pour out of the house attracted by the noise. They opened the
yard gate and thus offered a safe exit to the cart.
"There is no longer any danger," I said to the driver; "lead your horses
on. But whom does this conveyance belong to?"
"To Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony, who arrived yesterday at Mayence.
He stops at Victoria's house," answered the driver, while calming down
his horses.
While the cart proceeded into the yard of Victoria's residence, I walked
back towards the captain to thank him for his timely aid.
Marion had left his blacksmith's anvil for the army many years previous.
He was well known and generally beloved among the soldiers, as much for
his heroic courage and extraordinary strength, as for his exceptional
good judgment, his sound reasoning powers, the austerity of his morals,
and his extreme good fellowship. He now stood on the road, and with his
casque in his hand wiped the sweat off his brow. He wore a cuirass of
steel scales over his Gallic blouse, and a long sword at his side. His
dusty boots told of a recent and long ride on horseback. His large
sunburnt face, partly covered by a thick beard that began to be streaked
with grey, was open and pleasing.
"Captain Marion," I said to him, "I must thank you for having saved me
from being ground under the wheels of that cart."
"I did not know it was you who ran the risk of being trampled under the
hoofs of those horses like a dog! A stupid sort of a death for a brave
soldier like you, Schanvoch! But when I heard that devil of a driver
crying: 'Save yourself!' I surmised he was about to kill somebody and I
tried to hold the cart back. Fortunately my mother endowed me with a
good pair of wrists. But where is my dear friend Eustace?" added the
captain looking around.
"Whom do you refer to?"
"To a brave fellow, the old companion of my blacksmith days. Like me, he
left the hammer for the lance. The fortune of war served me better than
it did him. Despite his bravery, my friend Eustace has remained a simple
horseman, while I have been promoted to captain. But there he is,
yonder, with his arms crossed, and motionless as a signpost. Ho!
Eustace! Eustace!"
At the call, the companion of Captain Marion approached slowly, with his
arms crossed over his breast. He was a man of middle size and vigorous
frame. His pale blonde hair and beard, his bilious complexion, his harsh
and sullen physiognomy offered a striking contrast to the pleasant
exterior of the captain. I asked myself what singular affinity could
draw two men of such different appearance, and doubtless also such
dissimilar characters, into close and constant friendship.
"How is that, friend Eustace," the captain jokingly remarked to him,
"you remain yonder looking at me with crossed arms, while I am engaged
in holding back a runaway team?"
"You are strong," Eustace answered; "what aid can the flesh-worm bring
to the bull?"
"That man is certainly consumed with jealousy and hatred," I thought to
myself at hearing the answer and observing the sullen looks of the
captain's friend.
"There is no flesh-worm nor bull in the case, my friend Eustace,"
answered the captain with his habitual joviality and looking rather
flattered by the comparison; "but when the flesh-worm and the bull are
comrades, then, however strong the latter may be, or small the former,
the one does not forsake the other--union makes strength, says the
proverb."
"Captain," answered the soldier with a bitter smile, "did I ever forsake
you in the hour of danger? Have I not always fought at your side, since
we left the forge together?"
"I bear witness to the truth of that," cried Marion cordially, taking
Eustace by the hand. "As true as the sword you carry is the last weapon
I forged in order to give you a token of friendship, as it is engraved
on the blade, you have ever in battle 'marched in my shadow,' as the
saying goes in my country."
"What is there strange about that?" replied the soldier. "Beside you, so
brave and robust, I was what the shadow is to the body."
"By the devil! Look at the shadow! My friend Eustace!" the captain
exclaimed and laughed, and addressing me he added pointing at his
companion Eustace:
"Let me have two or three thousand shadows like that, and the first
battle that we fight on the other side of the Rhine, I shall bring back
a herd of Frankish prisoners."
"You are a captain of renown! I, like so many other poor waifs, are good
only to obey, to fight and to be killed. We are only meat for battles,"
replied the old blacksmith with an envious look and his lips slightly
losing their color.
"Captain," I said to Marion, "I presume you wish to see Victorin and his
mother?"
"Yes, I have a report to render to Victorin of a journey that my friend
and I have just made."
"I followed you as a soldier," Eustace said; "the name of an obscure
horseman must not be remembered before Victoria the Great."
The captain shrugged his shoulders with impatience and jokingly shook
his enormous fist at his friend.
"Captain," I insisted, addressing Marion, "let us hasten to Victoria. I
should have been with her since dawn. I am late."
"Friend Eustace," Marion said, starting to walk with me toward
Victoria's residence, "will you stay here, or wait for me at our
lodging?"
"I shall wait here at the door--that is a subaltern's place."
"Would you believe it, Schanvoch," Marion replied laughing, "would you
believe that it is nearly twenty years that lad and I live together and
quarrel like two brothers? He will not forget that I am a captain, and
will not treat me as a simple anvil-beater, as he formerly used to."
"I am not the only one, Marion, to realize the difference there is
between us," Eustace answered. "You are one of the most renowned
captains in the army--I am only one of the least of its soldiers."
Saying this Eustace sat down on a stone near the door, and bit his
nails.
"He is incorrigible," the captain remarked to me; and we two entered the
house of Victoria.
"Captain Marion must be strangely blinded by friendship," I thought to
myself, "to fail to perceive that his companion is consumed with
malevolent jealousy."
The residence of the Mother of the Camps was extremely simple. Captain
Marion having asked one of the soldiers on guard whether Victorin could
receive him, the soldier answered that he could give him no information
on that head, seeing that the young general had not spent the night in
the house.
Despite the camp life, Marion preserved great austerity of morals. He
seemed shocked to learn that Victorin had not yet returned home, and he
cast a dissatisfied look at me. I wished to excuse Victoria's son, and
said to him:
"Let us not be hasty in believing evil. Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony,
arrived yesterday at the camp. It may be that Victorin spent the night
in conference with him."
"So much the better. I would like to see that young man, who to-day is
chief of the Gauls, free himself from the claws of that pest of
profligacy that drives so many of us to evil deeds. As to myself, the
moment I see a woman's bonnet or a short skirt, I turn my head away as
if I saw the devil in person."
"Victorin improves, and he will improve still more with ripening years,"
I replied to the captain. "But what can we do--he is young--he loves
pleasure--and pretty girls."
"I also love pleasure, and furiously, too!" exclaimed the good captain.
"There is nothing that I delight more in, when my duties are done, than
to enter my lodging and empty a pot of cool beer with my friend Eustace,
while we chat over our old trade, or entertain ourselves furbishing our
weapons and good armor. Those are real pleasures! And notwithstanding
all the excitement that one finds in them, they are absolutely
honorable. Let us hope, Schanvoch, that Victorin may some day prefer
them to his immodest and diabolical orgies with the pretty girls, that
scandalize us."
"I am of your opinion, captain; hope is better than despair. But in the
absence of Victorin you may confer with his mother. I shall notify her
of your arrival."
Saying this I left Marion alone, and passing into a neighboring
apartment, encountered a serving-girl who led me to Victoria, the Mother
of the Camps, my foster-sister.