The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps. Эжен Сю

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СКАЧАТЬ wife, who, in her despair, threw herself into the river and was drowned."

      "The soldier who misdemeaned himself in that manner," remarked one of the oarsmen, "would speedily have his head cut off by a strict chief."

      "And he would have deserved the punishment," added another oarsman. "As much as the next man, I would find pleasure in bantering with the tavern-keeper's wife. But to offer her violence, that is an act of savagery worthy only of those Frankish butchers, whose priestesses, veritable devil's cooks, boil their prisoners alive in their caldrons."

      I was so stupefied by the accusation made against Victorin that I remained silent for a moment. But my voice soon came to me and I cried:

      "Calumny! A calumny as infamous as the act would have been. Who is it dares accuse Victoria's son of such a crime?"

      "A well informed man," Douarnek answered me.

      "His name! Give me the liar's name!"

      "His name is Morix. He was the secretary of one of Victoria's relatives. He came to the camp about a month ago to confer upon grave matters."

      "The relative is Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony," I said with increased stupefaction. "The man is the incarnation of kindness and loyalty; he is one of Victoria's oldest and most faithful friends."

      "All of which renders the man's testimony all the more reliable."

      "What! He, Tetrik! Did Tetrik confirm what you have just said?"

      "He communicated it to his secretary, and confirmed the occurrence, while deploring the shocking excesses of Victorin's dissoluteness."

      "Calumny! Tetrik has only words of kindness and esteem for Victoria's son."

      "Schanvoch, I have served in the army for the last twenty-five years. Ask my officers whether Douarnek is a liar."

      "I believe you to be sincere; only you have been shamefully imposed upon."

      "Morix, the secretary of Tetrik, narrated the occurrence not to me only but to other soldiers in the camp for whose wine he was paying. We all placed confidence in his words, because more than once did I myself and several others of my companions see Victorin and his friends heated with wine and indulging in crazy feats of arms."

      "Does not the ardor of courage heat up young heads as much as wine?"

      "Listen, Schanvoch, I have seen – with my own eyes – Victorin drive his steed into the Rhine saying that he would cross the river on horseback; and he would certainly have been drowned had not another soldier and I rushed into a boat and fished him half drunk out of the water, while the current carried his horse away. And do you know what Victorin then said to us? 'You should have let me drink; the white wine of Beziers runs in this stream.' What I am telling you now is no calumny, Schanvoch, I saw it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears."

      Despite my attachment to Victorin I could not but reply to the soldier's testimony, saying: "I knew him to be incapable of an act of cowardice and infamy; but I also knew him to be capable of certain acts of extravagance and hotheadedness."

      "As to myself," replied another soldier, "more than once, as I mounted guard near Victorin's house which is separated from Victoria's by a little plot of flowers, have I seen veiled women leave his place at early dawn. They were of all colors and sizes, blondes and brunettes, tall and short, some robust and stout, others slender and thin. At least, that was the impression that the women left upon me, unless the gloaming deceived my sight, and it was always the same woman."

      "I notice that you are too sincere to make any answer to that, friend Schanvoch," Douarnek said to me; indeed, I could raise no objection against the latter accusation. "You must, therefore, not feel surprised at our trust in the words of Tetrik's secretary. You must admit that the man who in a drunken fit takes the Rhine for a stream of Bezier's wine, and from whose house a procession of women is seen to issue in the morning, is quite capable, in a fit of inebriety, of doing violence to a tavern-keeper's wife."

      "No!" I cried. "A man may be afflicted with the faults of his years in an aggravated degree, without therefore being an infamous fellow, a criminal!"

      "See here, Schanvoch, you are the personal friend of our mother Victoria. You love Victorin as if he were your own son. Say to him – 'The soldiers, even the grossest and most dissolute among them, do not like to see their own vices reproduced in the chief whom they have chosen. By your conduct, the army's affection is daily withdrawn more and more from you and is centering wholly upon Victoria.'"

      "Yes," I answered thoughtfully, "and the process started since Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony, the relative and friend of Victoria, made his last visit to our camp. Until then our young chief was generally beloved, despite his little foibles."

      "That is true. He is so good, so brave, so kind to all! He sat his horse so well! He had so bold a military bearing! We loved the young captain as an own child! We knew him as a babe, and rode him on our knees when still a little fellow, during the watches in the camp! Later we shut our eyes to his foibles, because parents are ever indulgent! But there can be no room for indulgence towards baseness!"

      "And of this baseness," I replied, now more and more forcibly struck by the circumstance, which, recalling certain incidents to my mind, awakened a vague suspicion in me, "and of these acts of baseness there is no evidence other than the word of Tetrik's secretary?"

      "The secretary repeated to us his own master's words."

      During this conversation, to which I lent increasing attention, our bark, ever moving forward under the vigorous strokes of the four oarsmen, had traversed the Rhine and reached the opposite shore. The soldier's backs were turned to the bank on which we were about to land. I was so wholly absorbed in what I had just learned regarding the army's increasing disaffection towards Victorin, that I never once thought of casting my eyes upon the shore to which we were drawing near. Suddenly a sharp whizz struck our ears. I cried out: "Throw yourselves down flat upon your benches!"

      It was too late. A volley of long arrows flew over our boat. One of the oarsmen was instantly killed, while Douarnek, whose back was still turned to the shore received one of the arrows in the back.

      "This is the way the Franks receive parliamentarians during a truce," remarked the veteran without dropping his oar, and even without turning around. "This is the first time I have been hit in the back. An arrow in the back does not become a soldier. Pull it out quick, comrade," he added, addressing the oarsman who sat behind him.

      But despite his intrepidity, Douarnek managed his oar with less vigor. Although the wound that he received was not serious, his face betrayed the pain that he felt; the blood flowed copiously.

      "I told you so, Schanvoch," he proceeded to say. "I told you that your foliage of peace would prove a poor rampart against the treachery of the Frankish barbarians. Fall to, my lads! We must now row all the harder, seeing we are only three left. Our comrade yonder, who is bumping his nose against his bench, with his limbs stiffened, can no longer count as an oarsman!"

      Douarnek had not finished his sentence before I dashed forward to the prow of the bark, and passing over the corpse of the soldier who lay dead across his bench seized one of the oak branches and waved it over my head as a signal of peace.

      A second volley of arrows, that came flying from behind an embankment of the river, was the only answer to my appeal. One of the missiles grazed my arm, another broke off its point against my iron casque; but none of the soldiers was hit. We were then only a short distance from the shore. I threw myself into the water, swam a little distance, and as soon as my feet struck СКАЧАТЬ