And he advanced among the shattered and trampled vestiges of Gallic huts, the thatched roofs of which once extended like some motionless army and which were now degraded into less even than ruins—into little more than a heap of manure spread upon the ground. And he reflected:

"Behold what remains of so many ages of men! Behold what they have made of the dwellings wherein the chiefs of the Atrebates hung their arms!"

The sun had risen over the grades of the amphitheatre, and with insatiable and inquisitive hatred the Gaul wandered among the vast enclosures filled with bricks and stones. His large blue eyes gazed on these stony monuments of conquest, and he shook his long fair locks in the fresh breeze. Thinking himself alone, he muttered curses. But not far from the stone-masons' yard he perceived, at the foot of an oak-crowned hillock, a man seated on a mossy stone in a crouching position, with his mantle thrown over his head. He wore no insignia; but on his finger was the knight's ring, and the Atrebate knew enough of a Roman camp to recognize a military tribune. This soldier was writing on tablets of wax and appeared wrapt in thought. Having long remained motionless, he raised his head, pensive, with his style to his lips, looked about him vacantly, then gazed down again and resumed his writing. Komm saw his full face and perceived that he was young, and that he had a gentle, high-born air.

Then the Atrebate chief recalled his oath. He felt for his knife beneath his cloak, slipped behind the Roman with the agility of the savage and plunged the blade into the middle of his back. It was a Roman blade. The tribune uttered a deep groan and sank down. A trickle of blood flowed from one corner of his mouth. The waxen tablets remained on his tunic between his knees. Komm took them and looked eagerly at the signs traced thereon, thinking them to be magic signs the knowledge of which would give him great power. They were letters which he could not read and which were taken from the Greek alphabet then preferred to the Latin alphabet by the young littérateurs of Italy. Most of these letters were effaced by the flat end of the style; those which remained were Latin lines in Greek metre, and here and there they were intelligible:

TO PHŒBE, ON HER TOMTIT
O thou, whom Varius loved more than his eyes,
Thy Varius, wandering beneath the rainy sky of Galata ...
And the couple sang in their golden cage of gold.
. . . . . . . . .
O my white Phœbe, with prudent hand give
Millet and fresh water to thy frail captive.
She sits, she is a mother: a mother is timid.
. . . . . . . . .
Oh! come not to the misty Ocean's strand,
Phœbe, for fear ...
... Thy white feet and thy limbs
So nimbly moving to the crotalum's rhythm.
. . . . . . . . .
And neither the gold of Crœsus nor the purple of Attala,
But thy fresh arms, thy breasts....

A faint sound ascended from the waking town. Past the remnants of the Gallic huts where a few barbarians, fierce though of humble rank, were still lurking in the trenches, the Atrebate fled, and through a breach in the wall he leapt into the open country.

5

When, through the legionaries' sword, the lictor's lashes and Cæsar's flattering words Gaul was at length completely pacified, Marcus Antonius, the quaestor, came to take up his winter quarters in Nemetacum of the Atrebates. He was the son of Julia, Cæsar's sister. His functions were those of paymaster to the troops. It was for him, also, to apportion the booty captured, in accordance with established rules. This booty was immense; for the conquerors had discovered bars of gold and carbuncles under the stones of sacred places, in the hollows of oaks and in the still water of pools; they had collected golden utensils from the huts of exterminated tribes and their chiefs.

Marcus Antonius brought with him many scribes and land surveyors who set to work upon the apportionment of lands and movable goods, and would have perpetrated many useless writings had not Cæsar prescribed for them simple and rapid methods of procedure. Merchants from Asia, workmen, lawyers and other settlers came in crowds to Nemetacum; and the Atrebates who had quitted their town returned one by one, curious, astonished, filled with wonder. The Gauls, for the most part, were now proud to wear the toga and to speak the tongue of the magnanimous sons of Remus. Having shaved off their long moustaches they had resembled Romans. Those who had succeeded in retaining any wealth employed a Roman architect to build them a house with an inner porch, rooms for the women and a fountain adorned with shell-work. They had paintings of Hercules, Mercury and the Muses in their dining-room, and would sup reclining on couches.

Komm, though himself illustrious and the son of an illustrious father, had lost most of his followers. Nevertheless he refused to submit, and led a wandering, warlike life in company with a few fighting-men who were addicted to plunder and rape, or who, like their chief, were possessed of a keen desire for liberty or of hatred for the Romans. They followed him into impenetrable forests, into marshes and even into those moving islands which occur in the broad estuaries of rivers. They were entirely devoted to him, but they addressed him without respect, as a man speaks to his equal, because they were actually his equals in courage, in the extremes of continual hardships, of poverty and wretchedness. They dwelt in trees or in the clefts of rocks. They sought out caverns worn in the friable stone by the water gushing down narrow valleys. When there were no beasts to hunt, they fed on blackberries and arbutus berries. They were excluded from towns by their fear of the Romans or by the vigilance of the Roman guards. In few villages were they readily received. Komm, however, always found a welcome in the huts scattered over the wind-swept sands which border the lazy waters of the Somme estuary. The dwellers on these dunes fed on fish. Poor, dishevelled, buried among the blue thistles of their barren soil, they had had no experience of Roman might. They received Komm and his companions into their subterranean abodes, which were covered with reeds and stones rounded by the Ocean. They listened to him attentively, having never heard any man talk so well. He said to them: