“He compares us with the barbarians in a way which recalls Tacitus and his Teutons, perhaps idealizing the barbarians, but scarcely, I fear, caricaturing the Romans. ‘You Romans and Christians and Catholics,’ he writes, ‘are defrauding your brothers, are grinding the faces of the poor, are frittering away your lives over the impure and heathenish spectacles of the amphitheatre; you are wallowing in licentiousness and drunkenness. The barbarians meanwhile, heathens or heretics though they may be, and however fierce towards us, are just and fair in their dealings with one another. The men of the same clan, and following the same king, love one another with true affection. The impurities of the theatre are unknown amongst them. Many of their tribes are free from the taint of drunkenness, and among all, except the Alans and the Huns, chastity is the rule.’
“His own home is like a monastery for austerity and regularity of life. His wife and daughter consecrate themselves to a religious life, and all the household are devoted to the service of the poor. He is a presbyter, but he is revered far and wide for his learning, secular and sacred; his counsel is sought by the highest and the lowest, and he has been called a teacher of bishops (Magister Episcoporum).
“His sympathies are with the down-trodden and the poor. He pleads fervently for those wretched peasants who revolted lately in Northern Gaul (called by their oppressors Bagaudæ, i. e. a mob). ‘They were despoiled, afflicted, murdered, by wicked and bloody judges, and shall we impute their misfortunes to them? We have made them what they are. Shall we call those rebellious and lost whom we compelled to be criminals? By what were they made Bagaudæ (a mob) but by our iniquities, by the injustice of judges, by the proscriptions, rapine, and exactions of those who turned the public revenues into emoluments for themselves?’
“Thank God for these days with Salvian; they make me hope once more.”
The last letter was from Toulouse, from the court of Theodoric, King of the Visigoths.
“Here at last! On our way to encounter the enemy at last, among these brave Goths, men at least, if barbarians; Christians in some sort, if Arians. Every morning before dawn the king and some of his household attend divine service in the church. At his banquets no women singers are admitted, no exciting, dissolute songs are allowed. The music, such as it is, is martial and manly.
“And in conclusion, the alliance between the Empire and the Visigoths is accomplished. To-morrow we shall be on our way to join Aetius, and to relieve the city of Orleans. Not a day too soon, they say; God grant it may not be too late. For the countless hosts of the Huns have gathered around the city for weeks; their battering-rams have been planted against the walls, and their unerring arrows have been slaughtering the garrison.
“I dispatch this hence. To-morrow we are to be on our way to the battle-field, wherever and whatever that may prove to be.”
