ng lances after the fashion of crow-bars, succeeded, without
approaching too near, in shattering the handles of the scythes. This
safeguard demolished, a new attack commenced. The issue was not
doubtful. While the scythes were falling under the blows of the
soldiers, my mother hurriedly said a few words to Martha and Henory. The
two, with a look of pride and determination on their faces, ran towards
the cover which sheltered the children. Margarid also spoke to the young
childless women, and they, as well as the young girls, took and piously
kissed her hands.

At that moment, the last scythes fell. Margarid seized a sword in one
hand and a white cloth in the other. She stepped to the front of the
chariot, waved the white cloth, and threw away the sword, as if to
announce to the enemy that all the women wished to give themselves up.
The soldiers, at first astonished at the proposed surrender, answered
with laughs of ironical consent. Margarid seemed to be awaiting a
signal. Twice she impatiently cast her eyes toward the shelter, where
the two women had gone. Evidently, as the signal she seemed to wait for
was not given, she was trying to distract the enemy's attention, and
again waved her cloth, pointing alternately to the town of Vannes and to
the sea.

The soldiers, unable to take in the meaning of these gestures, looked at
one another questioningly. Then Margarid, after another hasty glance at
the redoubt, exchanged a few words with the girls round about her,
seized a dagger, and, in quick succession struck three of the maidens,
who had nobly bared their chaste bosoms to the knife. Meanwhile the
other young women dispatched one another with steady hands. They had
just fallen when Martha reappeared from the enclosure where the children
had been hidden during the battle. Proud and serene, she held her two
little daughters in her arms. A spare wagon-pole stood in front of her,
the upper extremity of which was at a considerable elevation from the
ground. She leaped on the edge of the car; a cord was around her neck.
She passed the end of the cord through the ring at the extremity of the
pole. Margarid steadied it in both hands. Martha leaped into the air
with outspread arms, and hung there, strangled. Her two little children,
instead of falling to the ground, remained suspended on either side of
her breast, for she had passed the noose around their necks also.

All this occurred so rapidly, that the Romans, at first str