TETRIK.
The personage who now entered the apartment was an undersized man of
middle age. His face was refined and gentle; an affable smile played
permanently around his lips. In short, his exterior bespoke so fully the
man of honor that, seeing him enter, Victoria could not refrain from
casting at me a look that still seemed to reproach me for my suspicions.
Tetrik walked straight to Victoria, kissed her on the forehead with
paternal familiarity and said:
"Greeting to you, Victoria!"
And approaching the cradle in which the grandson of the Mother of the
Camps still slept, the Governor of Gascony contemplated the child with
tenderness, and added, in a low voice, as if afraid to awaken him:
"Sleep, poor little one! You are smiling in your infantine dreams, and
you know not that, perhaps, the future of our beloved Gaul may rest upon
your head. Sleep, little fellow, predestined, no doubt, to carry out the
task that your glorious father has undertaken! A noble task that will
engage his efforts for many long years under the inspiration of your
august grandmother! Sleep, poor little one," Tetrik added, with eyes
dimmed with tears of tenderness, "the gods that are propitious to Gaul
will watch over you--you will grow up for the welfare of your country!"
While her relative wiped his moist eyes, Victoria again interrogated me
with her looks, as if asking me whether such was the language and the
physiognomy of a traitor, of a cowardly hypocrite, of a man who was a
perfidious enemy of the child's father.
Turning then to me, Tetrik said affectionately:
"Greeting to the best, the most faithful friend of the woman whom I most
love and venerate in the world; greeting to Victoria's foster-brother."
"Your speech is true. I am the obscurest but also the most devoted
friend of Victoria," I answered looking fixedly at Tetrik, "and it is
the duty of a friend to unmask scamps and traitors."
"I am of your opinion, friend Schanvoch," Tetrik answered with
simplicity. "A friend's first duty is to unmask scamps and traitors. I
fear the roaring lion with its jaws wide open less than the serpent that
creeps in the dark."
"Now, then, I, Schanvoch, have this to say to you, Tetrik. You are one
of the dangerous reptile that you have just mentioned. I consider you a
traitor! And I purpose to unmask your treason!"
"Schanvoch!" cried Victoria interrupting me in a reproachful tone.
"I perceive that the old Gallic love for raillery, one of our
franchises, has returned with our gods and our freedom," replied the
governor smiling.
And turning to Victoria he added:
"Our friend Schanvoch possesses the art of dry humor--the most amusing
of all--"
"My brother speaks seriously and out of an honorable impulse," the
Mother of the Camps broke in saying. "And I grieve thereat, since I
know that he is mistaken; but he is sincere in his error--"
Tetrik let his eyes wander alternately from Victoria to me with no
little amazement; for a moment he was silent; thereupon he said in a
serious and penetrating voice:
"All faithful friends are quick to suspect. Good Schanvoch, your
distrust is inexplicable to me; but it must have its reason. The attack
was frank, frank shall be the answer. Let us settle the question. What
is your charge against me?"
"About a month ago you came to Mayence. A man of your retinue, your
secretary, Morix by name and well supplied with money, gave the soldiers
to drink and at the same time endeavored to irritate them against
Victorin, saying to them that it was disgraceful that their general, one
of the two chiefs of regenerated Gaul, should be a drunkard and a
profligate. Did your secretary hold such language, yes or no? I wait for
your answer."
"Proceed, friend Schanvoch, proceed--"
"Your secretary told a story that, being subsequently spread through the
camp, has greatly irritated the soldiers against Victorin. This was the
story: A few months ago, Victorin and several officers went to a tavern
on one of the isles in the Rhine; after having drunk copiously,
Victorin, excited by the wine, violated the innkeeper's wife, and she
thereupon killed herself in despair--"
"Calumny!" cried Victoria. "I know and condemn my son's faults--but he
is incapable of such an infamous act!"
The governor listened to me without betraying the slightest emotion.
Presently he said with a smile and his habitual placidity of
countenance:
"So, then, good Schanvoch, it is your opinion that, obedient to orders
received from me, my secretary spread unworthy calumnies in the camp?"
"Yes. It is all done with your knowledge and consent."
"And what could be my motive?"
"You are ambitious--"
"And in what manner could such calumnies subserve my ambition?"
"If the dissatisfaction of the soldiers with Victorin, whom they
elected, continues, you would then use your influence with Victoria to
the end of inducing her to propose you to the soldiers as Victorin's
successor in the government of Gaul."
"A mother! Did you stop to consider that, good Schanvoch?" Tetrik
answered looking at Victoria. "A mother sacrifice a son to a friend!"
"In the greatness of her love for her country, Victoria would certainly
sacrifice her son to your elevation if the measure became necessary to
the welfare of Gaul. Am I mistaken, sister?"
"No," Victoria answered me evidently grieved at my accusations against
her relative; "in that you say the truth, but as to the inferences that
you draw therefrom, I reject them."
"And that heroic sacrifice, good Schanvoch," resumed the governor,
"Victoria is expected to make knowing that it was through my underground
calumnies that her son's reputation was blasted with the soldiers?"
"My sister would not have been aware of your intrigues had I not
unmasked them. Besides, more than once did I hear her say, and justly
say, that in case peace was established, it would be better for the
country if its chief, instead of being ever prone to battle, gave
serious thought to the healing of the wounds inflicted by the past
wars. She often mentioned you as one of the men who wisely prefer peace
to war."
"It is true, I hold that the sword, good to destroy, is impotent to
reconstruct," remarked Victoria; "and the freedom of Gaul once firmly
established, I would prefer to see my son give more thought to peace
than to war. It was, therefore, Schanvoch, that I commissioned you with
one last attempt with the Franks, looking to the restoration of peace."
"Allow that I interrupt you, Victoria," put in Tetrik, "and that I ask
our friend Schanvoch whether he has any other charges against me."
"I charge you with being either the secret agent of the Roman Emperor
Galien, or the agent of the chief of the new creed, Roman Catholicism."
"I!" cried the governor. "I the agent of the Christians!"
"I said the agent of the chief of the new creed. I refer to the Bishop
of Rome, who entitles himself 'Sovereign Pontiff.'"
"I the agent of Etienne, the Bishop of Rome, and fourteenth Pope of the
new church?--of that Pope, of whom Firmilien, the Bishop of Caesarea,
wrote to Cyprian, the presiding officer of the Spanish council, composed
of twenty-eight bishops: 'Would one believe that that man (Pope Etienne)
had a soul in his body? Evidently his body is but ill conducted, and his
soul is in a disordered condition. Etienne does not stick at calling his
brother Cyprian a false Christ, a false apostle, a fraudulent artisan;
in order to forestall having these things said of himself, he has the
audacity to make the accusation against others.' And can I be the agent
of that ambitious pontiff! Of that simoniacal bishop, who is given over
to all manner of vices!"
"Yes--unless that, deceiving at once both the Roman Emperor and the Pope
of Rome, you are serving both, ready to sacrifice the one or the other,
according as your ambition may require."
"That I serve the Romans is a thing that I am ready to admit," Tetrik
answered with his unalterable placidity. "However unjust your suspicion
towards me, it may be understood, as an instance of extreme patriotism.
We are well aware that, although we have succeeded, by force of arms, to
reconquer during nearly three centuries, inch by inch the full freedom
once enjoyed by old Gaul, the Roman Emperors have seen with sorrow our
country slip from their dominion. Accordingly, I can understand,
Schanvoch, how you might accuse me of desiring to arrive at power in
Gaul, with the end in view of sooner or later restoring the country to
the Romans, although in doing so I would be betraying it most
infamously. But is it imaginable that I act in the interest of the Pope
of the Christians, of those unhappy people who are everywhere persecuted
and martyrized? It is not a sane thought! What could I do for them? What
could they do for me?"
Schanvoch was about to answer. Victoria interrupted him with a gesture
and said to Tetrik while she pointed to the cross of black wood, the
emblem of the death of Jesus, that was placed near the brass vase with
the seven twigs of mistletoe, a druid symbol much in use among the
Gauls:
"Look at that cross, Tetrik, it tells you that, without infidelity to
our own gods, I nevertheless venerate him who said that no man has the
right to oppress his fellows; that the guilty merit pity and
consolation, not contempt and severity; and that the irons of the slave
should be stricken off. Blessed be these maxims, Tetrik; the wisest of
our druids have accepted them as holy; accordingly, you may judge how
dearly I love the gentle and pure morality of that young man of
Nazareth. But listen, Tetrik," Victoria added pensively, "there is
something unexplainable, strange and mysterious that makes me shudder.
Yes, many a time and oft, during my long watches beside the cradle of my
grandson, and when I pondered the present and the past, tormenting
thoughts crowded upon my mind concerning the future of our well-beloved
Gaul."
"And whence does your terror proceed?" Tetrik asked. "What is its
cause?"
"That for three successive centuries Rome was the implacable foe of
Gaul," Victoria answered; "that for so many centuries Rome was the
merciless scourge of the world!"
"Rome?" replied the governor. "Pagan Rome?"
"Yes. The tyranny that weighed down upon the world had its seat in
Rome," rejoined Victoria. "Now, then, I ask myself, by what strange
fatality have the bishops, the Popes of the new creed, who aspire to
reign over the universe by ruling the sovereigns of the world, been led
to establish the seat of their empire in Rome? Jesus of Nazareth branded
the high priests as liars and hypocrites. He preached above all,
humility, forgiveness, equality, fraternity among men, and lo! in his
apotheosized name, we now see a new hierarchy of high priests arising,
pretending to be the rulers of the world, and already, as Pope Etienne,
meriting the charges of ambition, deception and intolerance, even from
their fellow Christian bishops!"
"Is it you, Victoria, who hold such language?" Tetrik interrupted her
saying: "You so wise, so enlightened--can you fear the future of Gaul
to be endangered by those unhappy people who bear witness to their faith
by their martyrdom?"
"Oh!" cried the Mother of the Camps with exaltation. "I love, I admire
those poor Christians who die in torture while proclaiming the equality
of man before God, the liberation of the slaves, the community of goods,
love and forgiveness for the guilty! I love, I admire those poor
Christians who die on the scaffold and proclaim in the name of Jesus:
'Those are monsters of iniquity who hold their brothers in bondage, who
leave them to suffer in cold and hunger, instead of sharing with them
their bread and their cloak.' Oh! pity and veneration for those heroic
martyrs! But I stand in dread of those people who call themselves the
chiefs, the Popes of the Christians. Yes, I stand in dread of those high
priests who have fixed upon Rome as the seat of their mysterious
empire!--in that city, the center of the most frightful tyranny that has
ever crushed down the human race! I fear for the future of Gaul from
that quarter."
"Victoria," again Tetrik interrupted, saying: "You exaggerate the power
of those Christian pontiffs. Have not large numbers of them, persecuted
by the Roman Emperors, undergone martyrdom, like any other neophytes?"
"Every battle has its dead, and the Popes struggle with the Emperors in
order to wrench from these the dominion over the world! Among those
bishops there have been many who have spoken and died like Jesus. But if
there are some worthy pontiffs among them, and they are few, the
domination of the priests is not, for that, any the less dread a
visitation upon the people. Has not the government of our own priests
been despotic and merciless? Did not the druids leave the people for
over ten centuries steeped in crassest ignorance, governing them with
the instruments of barbarism--superstition and terror? Did not those
days of oppression and debasement last until the glorious and prosperous
epoch when, merged in the body of the nation as citizens, fathers and
soldiers, our druids took part in the common life of the people, in the
joys of the family, and in the national wars against the foreigner? What
I apprehend for the future of the nations is that some day there may be
established in Rome a murky alliance between the Pope and the most
powerful Emperors and Kings of the world! Unhappy will that day be for
the peoples! From such an alliance a frightful political and religious
tyranny will be born, and it will be watered with the blood of fresh
martyrs! Woe, then, to the peoples! They will once more be made to bend
under a pitiless theocratic yoke!"
As she uttered these words, Victoria seemed inspired by the prophetic
genius of the female druids of olden times. Tetrik listened to her in
silence, but instead of answering, he resumed with a smile:
"See how far we have wandered from the charges that our friend Schanvoch
has preferred against me--and yet, Victoria, your words, regarding the
apprehension that the Christian high priests, as you style them, fill
you with for the future, in a manner bring us back to the charges. So,
then, Schanvoch, the purpose of the perfidies that you charge me with is
to arrive at power in Gaul, to the end of betraying the country to pagan
or to Catholic Rome?"
"Yes, that is my opinion."
"Schanvoch, I shall not need many words for my defense. One of my
secretaries did seek to arouse the hostility of our soldiers against
Victorin. Your revelation comes rather late--"
"I learned the facts only yesterday."
"That is of no consequence," he replied, "that secretary was dismissed
by me just because I learned that, irritated at Victorin for having
railed at him several times, he sought to revenge himself by spreading
against the general calumnies that were even more ridiculous and odious.
But let us drop these petty matters. I am ambitious, you say, friend
Schanvoch! I aim at the government of Gaul, even if, in order to
accomplish my purpose, I should have to resort to unworthy intrigues!
Now, ask Victoria what errand brings me back to Mayence."
"Tetrik believes that the peace and prosperity of Gaul require that the
soldiers be induced to proclaim my son's son the heir of his father's
office. Tetrik believes he can count upon the consent of Emperor
Galien."
"Tetrik must, then, anticipate the speedy death of Victorin," I answered
looking fixedly at the governor.
He, however, whose eyes were rarely met, seeing he kept them habitually
lowered, answered:
"The Franks are on the other side of the Rhine--and Victorin is of
temerarious bravery. My ardent wish is that he may live many more years;
but death has no respect even for the most valuable life. It is my
opinion that Gaul would find a pledge of security for the future if it
knew that after Victorin the power would remain with the son of him whom
the army acclaimed its chief, especially seeing that the child would
have for his instructress Victoria, the Mother of the Camps."
"But in case Victoria were to die, who tells me, Tetrik, that you would
not have yourself appointed the child's tutor, exercise the power in his
name, and in that manner arrive at the government of Gaul?"
"Are you speaking seriously, Schanvoch?" Tetrik replied. "Ask Victoria
whether she needs my help in order to render her grandson worthy of her
and of the country? Do you imagine she is one of those weak women who
feel forced to share a glorious task with others? Is not the idolatry
that the soldiers entertain for her a sufficient guarantee that, in the
event of Victorin's premature death, she could preserve alone the
wardship of her grandson and govern in his name?"
Victoria shook her head thoughtfully and sadly, and said:
"I do not like your project of transmitting the office by inheritance,
Tetrik. What! Shall a child, still in his cradle, be designated to the
soldiers for their choice! Who knows what may become of this child?"
"Has he not you for his teacher?" asked Tetrik.
"Have I not been the teacher and instructress of Victorin also?" the
Mother of the Camps answered sadly. "And yet, despite all my vigilant
cares, my son has defects that serve as the basis for frightful
calumnies. But of these, I sincerely assure you, Tetrik, I hold you
guiltless; and I now hope that my brother Schanvoch will join me in
doing justice to your loyalty."
"I said so before, I repeat it now--I suspect this man!" I answered
Victoria.
She replied with impatience: "And I said so before and repeat it
now--you are a head of iron, a genuine Breton head, rebellious to all
reason, the moment a notion takes root in your brain."
Instinctively convinced of Tetrik's perfidy, but having no more proofs
against him, I said nothing more.
But Tetrik resumed with a smile, and without betraying the slightest
perturbation:
"Neither you nor I, Victoria, could convince our good Schanvoch of his
error. Let us leave that to an irresistible seductress--Truth. It will
with time furnish the evidence of my loyalty. We shall return later,
Victoria, to your repugnance in the matter of causing the army to
acclaim your grandson the heir of his father's office. I still expect to
overcome your scruples. But as I came in I saw one of your officers who
seemed to await his turn for an audience. Do you not think it well to
let him come in? It is Captain Marion, the old blacksmith, whom you
introduced to me at my first trip to the camp as one of the bravest men
in the army."
"His valor matches his disposition and good judgment," replied the
Mother of the Camps. "The man has a noble heart and is a faithful
friend. Despite his promotion, he has continued to love as a brother one
of the old companions of his trade, who remained a simple soldier."
"Even at the risk of being again taken for an iron head, I am of the
opinion that in the matter of this affection the good heart of Captain
Marion misleads his judgment. I can only hope, Victoria, that your
blindness may not be as complete as Captain Marion's."
"Do you mean that the faithful companion of Captain Marion is his
enemy?" queried Victoria. "You are singularly mistrustful to-day,
brother!"
When I alluded to Captain Marion and his friend I again sought to catch
the eyes of the Governor of Gascony, but in vain. Nevertheless it was
with no slight surprise that I noticed him slightly start with joy when
I asserted that Captain Marion had a secret foe in his camp companion.
Ever master over himself, Tetrik doubtlessly feared that slight as was
his manifestation of joy it might not have escaped me. He said:
"Envy is so revolting a feeling that I can never hear it mentioned
without it makes a painful impression upon me. I feel positively grieved
at what Schanvoch, who in this respect also, I hope, may be mistaken,
tells us of the comrade of Captain Marion. But, should my presence
prevent you from receiving the captain, Victoria, I shall withdraw."
"On the contrary, I wish you to be present at the interview that I am to
have with Marion and my brother Schanvoch. They were given important
commissions by my son, and yet," she added with a sigh, "the morning is
passing, and my son is not yet home!"
At that very moment the door of the room was thrown open, and Victorin
entered accompanied by Captain Marion.