This discovery, together with many others, imparted to me such accurate information on certain facts that I am enabled to describe them the same as if I had been present.
As I said, Victorin left his house at night to keep his assignation with Kidda, the Bohemian girl. He had met her only the previous evening for the first time. She made a deep impression upon him. He was young, handsome, bright and generous. That very day he had won a glorious battle. He was well aware of the easy morals of those strolling singers, who, in effect, were nothing but courtesans. He felt certain that he would possess the object of this latest whim. How great must his surprise have been when Kidda said to him with well simulated firmness, sadness and repressed passion:
"Victorin, I shall not speak to you of my virtue; you will laugh at the virtue of a strolling Bohemian singer. But you may believe me when I say that long before I saw you, your glorious name had reached me. Your renown for valor and goodness made my heart beat, unworthy of you as that heart is, seeing that I am a poor, degraded creature. Believe me, Victorin," she added with tears in her eyes, "if I were pure, you would have my love and my life; but I am soiled; I do not deserve your attention. I love you too passionately, I honor you too much ever to offer to you the remains of an existence debased by men, who are not worthy of being compared with you."
So far from cooling, the hypocritical language fired the ardor of Victorin; it exalted him beyond measure. His sensual whim for the woman was speedily transformed into a consuming and mad passion. Despite his protestations of devotion, despite his entreaties, despite his tears—he actually wept at the feet of the execrable woman—the Bohemian remained inexorable. Victorin's nature underwent thereupon a marked change. From mirthful, pleasant and open, it became retired and morose. He grew somber and taciturn. Both his mother and I were ignorant at the time of the cause of the change. To our pressing questions the young general would answer that, being struck by the manifestations of displeasure that the army had shown towards him, he did not wish to expose himself to a recurrence of their anger; thenceforth his life was to be austere and retired. With the exception of a few hours that he consecrated every day to his mother, Victorin now rarely left his house, and he avoided the company of his former boon companions. Struck, on their part, by his sudden change of deportment, the soldiers saw in it only the salutary effect of the remonstrances made to their young general in their name by Douarnek. They cherished him more than ever before. I later learned that, in his self-imposed solitude, the unhappy man habitually drank himself into utter stupor in order to forget his fatal passion, and that every evening he repaired to the Bohemian dancer's, only, however, to find her pitiless as ever.
About a month passed in this manner. Tetrik remained in Mayence in order to overcome Victoria's repugnance to the idea of having her grandson acclaimed the heir of his father's office. But Victoria ever answered the Governor of Gascony, saying:
"Ritha-Gaur, who made himself a blouse of the beard of the kings whom he shaved, overthrew royalty in Gaul about ten centuries ago. He held that, under royalty, it is the people and their descendants who are transmitted by hereditary right, to kings, and that these are rarely good, and generally bad. More and more enlightened by our venerable druids, the Gauls have wisely preferred to elect the chief whom they consider worthiest to govern them. They thus constituted themselves into a Republic. My grandson is still a child in his cradle; no one can know whether he will later have the qualities that are necessary for the government of a great people like ours. To acknowledge this child to-day as the heir of his father's office is tantamount to restoring the royalty that we have wisely overthrown. I hate royalty as much as did Ritha-Gaur."
Still hoping to overcome the resolution of the Mother of the Camps by his persistence, Tetrik prolonged his stay in Mayence—at least I was long under the impression that such was the only reason for his postponing his departure. Nor did Tetrik seem to be less surprised at the unaccountable change that came over Victorin. The latter, although plunged in brooding sadness, still preserved his affection for me. I even thought that more than once he was on the point of opening his heart to me and of confiding to me what he there kept hidden. Later, however, he ceased calling at my house as he formerly used to, and seemed even to avoid meeting me. His features, once so handsome and open, were no longer the same. Pale with suffering, worn by excessive and solitary indulgence in wine, their expression gradually assumed a sinister aspect. At times a sort of dementia seemed to speak out of his alternately fixed and wandering gaze.
About five weeks after the great battle of the Rhine, Victorin resumed his visits to my house. The turn was marked, both in point of suddenness and assiduity. Noticeable was the circumstance that the hours which he chose for his visits were those during which Sampso and my wife were home alone, I being at Victoria's writing the letters which she dictated. Ellen received the son of my foster-sister with her wonted affability. At first I imagined that, sorry at having kept himself away from me without cause and by a mere whim, he sought to bring about a reconciliation by means of my wife. I believed this all the more seeing that, despite his persistence in seeking to avoid me, he never spoke of me to Ellen except in terms of deep affection. Sampso was usually present at the conversations between her sister and Victorin. Only once did she leave them alone, and then, when she returned she was struck by the painful expression on my wife's face and the visible embarrassment shown by Victorin, who speedily took his departure.
"What is the matter, Ellen?" asked Sampso.
"Sister, I conjure you, never again leave me alone with Victoria's son. May it please the gods that I am mistaken! But to judge from some broken words that Victorin let drop, to judge by the expression of his face, I imagine that he is moved by a guilty love for me—and yet he is aware of my devotion to Schanvoch!"