"Yes," I answered in spite of myself. Before me was the vision of the charming fair faces of my little Sylvest and Syomara, who looked as much alike as twins and whom I had embraced a moment before the battle of Vannes. "Oh yes, they were good-looking. They were like their mother, who was so beautiful—!"
"If they had good looks, be easy, my fine Bull. They will be easy to dispose of. The dealers in children have for their especial patrons the decrepit and surfeited Roman Senators, who love fresh fruits. By the way, they have announced the near arrival of the patrician Trymalcion, a very rich and very noble man, an old and very capricious expert. He is traveling through the Roman colonies of southern Gaul, and is expected here, they say, on his galley which is as splendid as a palace. No doubt he would like to take back to Italy some graceful specimens of Gallic brats. If your children are pretty, their fate is assured, for the patrician Trymalcion is one of my partner's patrician customers."[19]
At first I listened to the "horse-dealer," without catching his meaning. But I was presently seized with a vertigo of horror at the idea that my children, who might unfortunately have escaped the death which their far-sighted mother had intended for them, might be carried to Italy to fulfill such a monstrous destiny. I felt neither anger nor fury, but a grief so great, and a fear so terrible, that I kneeled on the straw, and in spite of my manacles, stretched my pleading hands toward the "horse-dealer." Not finding words to utter my feelings, I wept, kneeling.
The "horse-dealer" looked at me in great surprise, and said:
"Well, well! What is it, my fine Bull? What ails you?"
"My children!" was all I could say, for sobs choked me. "My children! if they are living!"
"Your children?"
"What you said—the fate that awaits them—if they are sold to those men—"
"How? Their fate causes you alarm?"
"Hesus! Hesus!" I exclaimed, calling on the god in my lamentation. "It is horrible!"