The Casque's Lark Part 15

"Schanvoch, my son again spent the night out of the house!" remarked Victoria plying her needle more quickly, an action that, with her, always denoted deep annoyance.

"Having heard of your relative's arrival, I surmised that, possibly, grave questions kept Victorin closeted with Tetrik during the night.

That is the theory I threw out to Captain Marion, and told him that perhaps you would be ready to hear the report he has for your son."

Victoria remained silent for a moment; she then dropped her needlework on her lap, raised her head and resumed in a tone of suppressed grief:

"Victorin has vices--his vices are smothering his good parts. Moths destroy the best of grain."

"Have confidence and hope--age will mature him."

"During the last two years his vices grow upon him, his good parts decline."

"His bravery, his generosity, his frankness have not degenerated."

"His bravery no longer is the calm and provident bravery that becomes a general--it is becoming blind--headless. His generosity no longer distinguishes between the worthy and the unworthy. His reasoning powers decline--wine and debauchery are killing him. By Hesus! A drunkard and a debauche! He, my son! One of the chiefs of Gaul, free to-day and, perhaps, to-morrow, matchless among nations. Schanvoch, I am an unfortunate mother!"

"Victorin loves me--I shall reprove him severely."

"Do you imagine that your remonstrances will accomplish what the prayers of his own mother have failed to do? Of the mother who never left his side all his life, following him with the army, often even into battle?

Schanvoch, Hesus punishes me--I have been too proud of my son!"

"And what mother would not have been proud of him the day when a whole valiant army, of its own free choice, acclaimed as its chief the general of twenty years of age, behind whom they saw--you, his mother!"

"What does it matter, if he dishonors me! And yet, my only ambition was to make of my son a citizen, a man worthy of our fathers! Did I not, when nouris.h.i.+ng him with my milk, also nourish him with an ardent and holy love for our Gaul that was coming to life again--and to freedom!

What was it that I asked; what was it that I always desired? To live an obscure life and ignored, but devote my night-watches and my days, my intelligence, my knowledge of the past, which enables me to understand the present, and at times to peer into the future--in short, to devote all the energies of my soul and of my mind to rendering my son brave, wise, enlightened, worthy at all points of guiding the free men who chose him their chief. And then, Hesus is my witness, proud as a Gallic woman, happy as a mother of having given birth to such a man, I would have enjoyed his glory and my country's prosperity in the seclusion of my humble home. But to have a drunkard and debauche for a son! Oh, wrath of heaven! Does not the giddy-headed boy understand that every excess that he indulges in is a slap that he gives his mother in the face? If he does not understand it, our soldiers do. Yesterday, as I crossed the camp, three old hors.e.m.e.n rode towards me. Do you know what they said to me? 'Mother, we pity you!'--and they rode off dejectedly. Schanvoch, I tell you, I am an unhappy mother!"

"Listen to me. For some time since, our soldiers have been growing dissatisfied with Victorin. I admit it, I understand it. The warrior whom free men have chosen for their chief must be above excesses, and must even be able to control the impulses of his age. That is true, sister; and have I not often chided your son in your presence?"

"You have."

"Well, at this moment I take up his defense. These soldiers, whom we see to-day so full of scruples on the score of slips that are frequent with young chiefs, act, not so much in obedience to their own scruples, as in obedience to perfidious incitements that emanate from some secret enemy."

"What do you mean?"

"There are people who envy your son; they envy his influence over the troops. In order to undo him, his defects are being exploited so as to furnish a foundation for infamous calumnies."

"Who is jealous of Victorin? Who would have an interest in spreading such calumnies?"

"It is especially during the last month, not so, that this hostility to your son has manifested itself and has been on the increase?"

"Yes, yes; but whom do you suspect of inciting it?"

"Sister, what I am about to tell you is serious. It is a month ago that one of your relatives, the Governor of Gascony, came to Mayence--"

"Tetrik!"

"Yes; he departed after a stay of a few days! Almost immediately after Tetrik's departure the silent hostility towards your son began, and has since steadily grown!"

Victoria looked at me in silence, as if she did not quite grasp the bearing of my words. But a sudden thought seeming to flash through her mind, she cried in a tone of reproach:

"What! You suspect Tetrik! My own relative and best friend, the wisest of men, one of the most enlightened citizens of our age, a man who seeks his delight in letters and displays no mean poetic talents! One of the most useful men in the defense of Gaul, although he is not a man of war!

Tetrik, who in his government of Gascony repairs by dint of wisdom the evils that civil war inflicted upon the province! Oh, brother, I expected better things from your loyal heart and your good sense!"

"I suspect that man!"

"Oh, you iron-headed, inflexible nature! Why should you suspect Tetrik?

By what right? What has he done? By Hesus! If you were not my brother--if I did not know your heart--I would think you are jealous of my esteem for my relative!"

Victoria had barely uttered these last words, when she seemed to regret having allowed them to escape her. She said:

"Forget these words!"

"They would greatly grieve me, sister, if the unjust doubt that they express could blind you to the truth."

At this moment the servant entered and asked whether Tetrik could be admitted.

"Let him in," answered Victoria, "let him in immediately."

Tetrik stepped into the room.

CHAPTER X.

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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.ds 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."