"You do? Speak!"
"Before the great battle of the Rhine an infamous calumny was spread over the camp against Victorin. The army's affection for him was being withdrawn. Your son's victory regained for him the soldiers' affection. See how that old calumny becomes to-day a frightful reality. Victorin's crime cost him his life—and also his son's. His stock is extinct. A new chief must now be chosen for Gaul. Is this not so?"
"Yes, brother, all that is true."
"Did not that unknown soldier, my traveling companion, know when he revealed to me that a crime was being committed in my house—did he not know that unless I arrived in time to kill Victorin myself in the first access of my rage, your son would certainly be slaughtered by the troops who would undoubtedly rise in revolt at the first tidings of the felony?"
"But how," put in Sampso, "was the army apprised so soon of the felony, seeing that no one left the house?"
Struck by Sampso's observation the Mother of the Camps started and looked at me. I proceeded:
"Who is the man, Victoria, who tore your grandson from your arms and dashed his life against the ground? The same unknown soldier! Did he yield to an impulse of blind rage against the child? Not at all! Accordingly, he was but the instrument of some ambition that is as concealed as it is ferocious. Only one man had an interest in the double murder that has just extinguished your stock—because, once your stock is extinguished Gaul must choose a new chief—and the man whom I suspect, the man whom I accuse has long wished to govern Gaul!"
"His name!" cried Victoria, fixing upon me a look of intense agony. "The name of the man whom you suspect—"
"His name is Tetrik, your relative, the Governor of Gascony."
For the first time since I first expressed my suspicions of her relative, did Victoria seem to share them. She cast her eyes upon the corpse of her son with an expression of pitiful sorrow, kissed his icy forehead several times, and after a moment of profound reflection she seemed to take a supreme resolution. She rose and said to me in a firm voice: