"Annihilated."[13]
"O, my brother, and your courageous wife Meroë, both dead also!" flashed through my mind. "And Vannes, where we are," I added aloud to my companion, "Vannes is in the power of the Romans?"
"Even as the whole of Brittany, they say."
"And the Chief of the Hundred Valleys?"
"He has fled into the mountains of Ares with a handful of cavalry. The Romans are in pursuit of him." Then raising his eyes to heaven, he continued, "May Hesus and Teutates protect that last defender of the Gauls!"
I had put these questions while my thoughts were still disordered. But when I recalled the struggle at the chariot of war, the death of my mother, my father, my brother Mikael, my brother's wife and his two children, and finally, the almost certain death of my own wife with her son and daughter—for up to the moment when I lost consciousness I had not seen Henory leave the shelter behind the chariot—when I recalled all that, I heaved, in spite of myself, a great sigh of despair at finding myself alone in the world. I buried my face in the straw to shut out the light of day.
One of the tipsy keepers became irritated at hearing my moans, and showered several cruel blows of the scourge, accompanied with oaths, upon my shoulders. Forgetting the pain in the shame that I felt at the thought of me, the son of Joel, being struck with the lash, I leaped to my feet notwithstanding my weakness, intending to throw myself upon the keeper. But my chain, sharply tightened by the jerk, checked me, and made me trip and fall upon my knees. The keeper, enabled by the length of his scourge to keep out of the prisoners' reach, thereupon redoubled his blows, lashing me across the face, chest, and back. Other keepers ran up, fell upon me, and slipped manacles of iron upon my wrists.
Oh, my son, my son! You, for whose eyes I write all this down, obedient to the wishes of my father, never do yourself forget, and let also your sons preserve the memory of this outrage, the first that our stock ever underwent. Live, that you may avenge the outrage in due time. And if you cannot, let your sons wreak vengeance upon the Romans therefore.
With my feet chained and my hands in irons, unable to move, I did not wish to afford my tormentors the spectacle of impotent rage. I closed my eyes and lay still, betraying neither anger nor grief, while the keepers, provoked by my calmness, beat me furiously. Presently, however, a strange voice having interposed and spoken a few angry words in the Latin tongue, the blows ceased. I opened my eyes and three new personages stood before me. One of them was speaking rapidly to the keepers, gesticulating angrily, and pointing at me from time to time. This man was short and stout; he had a very red face, white hair and pointed grey beard. He wore a short robe of brown wool, buck-skin stocks, and low leather boots; he was not dressed in the Roman fashion. Of the two men who accompanied him, one, dressed in a long black robe, had a grave and sinister mien. The other held a casket under his arm. While I was gazing at these persons, my aged neighbor called my attention with a rapid glance to the fat little man with the red face and the white hair, who was conversing with the keepers, and said to me with a look of anger and disgust:
"The horse-dealer; the horse-dealer!"