s twisted of
several thongs and terminating in bits of lead, detached themselves
from time to time from the group, and walked here and there with the
uncertain gait of drunken men, casting jeering looks on the prisoners.
Next to me lay an aged man with white hair and beard, very pale and
thin. A bloody band half hid his forehead. He was sitting up, his elbows
on his knees, and his face between his hands. Seeing him wounded and a
prisoner, I concluded he was a Gaul. I did not err.

"Good father," I said to him, laying my hand lightly upon the old man's
arm, "where are we?"

Slowly raising his sad and mournful visage, the old prisoner answered
compassionately:

"Those are the first words you have spoken for two days."

"For two days?" I repeated, greatly astonished. I was unable to believe
so much time had passed since the battle of Vannes. I sought to recall
my wandering memory. "Is it possible? What, I have been here two days?"

"Yes, and you have been unconscious, in a delirium. The physician who
dressed your wounds made you take several potions."

"Now I recall it confusedly. And also--a ride in a chariot?"

"Yes, to come here from the battle-ground. I was with you in the
chariot, whither they carried you wounded and dying."

"And here we are--?"

"At Vannes."

"Our army?"

"Destroyed."

"Our fleet?"

"Annihilated."[13]

"O, my brother, and your courageous wife Meroe, both dead also!" flashed
through my mind. "And Vannes, where we are," I added aloud to my
companion, "Vannes is in the power of the Romans?"

"Even as the whole of Brittany, they say."

"And the Chief of the Hundred Valleys?"

"He has fled into the mountains of Ares with a handful of cavalry. The
Romans are in pursuit of him." Then raising his eyes to heaven, he
continued, "May Hesus and Teutates protect that last defender of the
Gauls!"

I had put these questions while my thoughts were still disordered. But
when I recalled the struggle at the chariot of war, the death of my
mother, my father, my brother Mikael, my brother's wife and his two
children, and finally, the almost certain death of my own wife with her
son and daughter--for up to the moment when I lost consciousness I had
not seen Henory leave the shelter behind the chariot--when I recalled
all that, I heaved, in spite of myself, a great sigh of despair at
finding myself alone in the world. I buried my face in the straw to shut
out the light of day.

One of the tipsy