ave, gayness ill beseems a prisoner. I cannot share your
light-heartedness."

"You are no prisoner, only a hostage. No bond binds you but your own
word; prisoners, on the contrary, are led firmly pinioned to the slave
market. Your grandfather and yourself ride freely, with us for your
companions, and we are escorting you, not to a slave market, but to the
palace of the Emperor Charles the Great, the mightiest monarch of the
whole world. Finally, prisoners are disarmed; your grandfather as well
as yourself carry your swords."

"Of what use are our swords now to us?" replied Vortigern with painful
bitterness. "Brittany is vanquished."

"Such are the chances of war. You bravely did your duty as a soldier.
You fought like a demon at the side of your grandfather. He was not
wounded, and you only received a lance-thrust. By Mars, the valiant god
of war, your blows were so heavy in the melee that you should have been
hacked to pieces."

"We would not then have survived the disgrace of Armorica."

"There is no disgrace in being overcome when one has defended himself
bravely--above all when the forces that one resisted and decimated, were
the veteran bands of the great Charles."

"Not one of your Emperor's soldiers should have escaped."

"Not one?" merrily rejoined the young Roman. "What, not even myself? Not
even I, who take such pains to be a pleasant traveling companion, and
who tax my eloquence to entertain you? Verily, you are not at all
grateful!"

"Octave, I do not hate you personally; I hate your race; they have,
without provocation, carried war and desolation into my country."

"First of all, my young friend, I am not of the Frankish race. I am a
Roman. Gladly do I relinquish to you those gross Germans, who are as
savage as the bears of their forests. But, let it be said among
ourselves, this war against Brittany was not without reason. Did not you
Bretons, possessed of the very devil as you are, attack last year and
exterminate the Frankish garrison posted at Vannes?"

"And by what right did Charles cause our frontiers to be invaded by his
troops twenty-five years ago? His whim stood him instead of right."

The conversation between Vortigern and Octave was interrupted by the
voice of Amael, who, turning in his saddle, called his grandson to him.
The latter, anxious to hasten to his grandfather, and also yielding to
an impulse of anger that the discussion with the young Roman had
provoked, brusquely clapped