he children are favored with pretty
features. Are your young ones good-looking?"

"Yes," I answered in spite of myself. Before me was the vision of the
charming fair faces of my little Sylvest and Syomara, who looked as much
alike as twins and whom I had embraced a moment before the battle of
Vannes. "Oh yes, they were good-looking. They were like their mother,
who was so beautiful--!"

"If they had good looks, be easy, my fine Bull. They will be easy to
dispose of. The dealers in children have for their especial patrons the
decrepit and surfeited Roman Senators, who love fresh fruits. By the
way, they have announced the near arrival of the patrician Trymalcion,
a very rich and very noble man, an old and very capricious expert. He is
traveling through the Roman colonies of southern Gaul, and is expected
here, they say, on his galley which is as splendid as a palace. No doubt
he would like to take back to Italy some graceful specimens of Gallic
brats. If your children are pretty, their fate is assured, for the
patrician Trymalcion is one of my partner's patrician customers."[19]

At first I listened to the "horse-dealer," without catching his meaning.
But I was presently seized with a vertigo of horror at the idea that my
children, who might unfortunately have escaped the death which their
far-sighted mother had intended for them, might be carried to Italy to
fulfill such a monstrous destiny. I felt neither anger nor fury, but a
grief so great, and a fear so terrible, that I kneeled on the straw, and
in spite of my manacles, stretched my pleading hands toward the
"horse-dealer." Not finding words to utter my feelings, I wept,
kneeling.

The "horse-dealer" looked at me in great surprise, and said:

"Well, well! What is it, my fine Bull? What ails you?"

"My children!" was all I could say, for sobs choked me. "My children! if
they are living!"

"Your children?"

"What you said--the fate that awaits them--if they are sold to those
men--"

"How? Their fate causes you alarm?"

"Hesus! Hesus!" I exclaimed, calling on the god in my lamentation. "It
is horrible!"

"Are you going crazy?" demanded the "horse-dealer." "And what is there
so horrible in the fate which awaits your children? Ah, what barbarians
you are in Gaul, indeed. But, know: there is no life easier nor more
flowery than that of these little flute-players and dancers with which
these rich old fellows amuse themselves. If you could see them, the
littl