"Citizens and soldiers acclaimed him with one voice. By choosing him they glorified Victoria—his stout-hearted preceptress. The brilliant qualities that they honored in him were her work. The son's election consecrated the sovereign influence of the mother—truly a sovereign in point of courage, genius and goodness. An era of glory and prosperity then opened to the country. Emancipating herself from the yoke of Rome, Gaul, free and strong, drove the Franks far away from her borders and began to enjoy the blessings of peace. And thus it came about that, from one end of our territory to the other there was one name everywhere idolized. That name—the first that the mothers taught their children after that of God—that name, so popular, that name wreathed in veneration and devoted love, was the name of Victoria!"
"In short, this woman, this incomparable mother, this divinity, this object of veneration—reigned in her son's name!"
"Yes, as virtue reigns over the world! Invisible to the eyes, it is to the heart that virtue reveals itself. As modest in her tastes as the obscurest matron in the land, Victoria fled from the glamor of honors. Living privately in a humble dwelling at Treves or Mayence, she delighted in the glory of her son, and in the well-being of Gaul—but not in order to reign as Queen—she despised royalty."
"And what was the cause of her haughty disdain for the great of the earth?"
"She held that the right which kings arrogated to themselves of transmitting to their children the ownership of the country with its people, like a private domain with its cattle, was an outrage to the majesty of man and a crime before God. She furthermore held that hereditary rule depraves the best dispositions, and produces the monsters that have horrified the world. Faithful to her principles, she refused to render the power hereditary in her grandson."
"She had a grandson?"
"Like you, Victoria was a grandmother."
And Loysik looked fixedly at the Queen. There was, in the manner in which Loysik accented the words addressed to Brunhild: Like you, Victoria, was a grandmother—there was in his tone so crushing an emphasis, so withering a condemnation of the shocking means employed by the monster in order to deprave, enervate and morally kill her own grandsons, whose lives she was nevertheless compelled to respect in order that she might reign in their name, that Brunhild turned livid with rage, but controlling herself so as not to expose the wound inflicted upon her pride, dropped her eyes before the aged monk. Loysik proceeded:
"Victoria was a grandmother, and, while ruling Gaul with her genius she never dropped her distaff, which she ever plied near the cradle of her grandson; she watched over him as she had done over the child's father, with solicitous firmness; her hope was to render that child also a good citizen and brave soldier. Her hope was dashed. A frightful plot dragged into their graves both the son and grandson of the august woman. They both perished in a popular uprising."
"Ha! Ha!" cried Brunhild breaking forth into a burst of sardonic laughter, as if her gathering hatred for the Gallic heroine was assuaged. "Such, then, is the justice of God!"