"What would I lose?—"
"Magnificent Gallic ornaments!"
"Ornaments!—What ornaments?" cried Elwig doubtfully, although her eyes snapped with greed.
"Do you imagine that, in sending her foster-brother to convey a message to the kings of the Franks, Victoria the Great did not prepare, as a pledge of truce, rich presents for the wives and sisters who accompany them, and for those whom they left behind in Germany?"
Elwig leaped to her feet with one bound, hurled her knife away, clapped her hands, and emitted loud peals of laughter that sounded like a crazy woman's transports. Thereupon she crouched down again beside me, and said in a voice broken with childish breathlessness:
"Presents? You bring presents with you?—Where are they?"
"Yes, I bring with me presents fit to dazzle an empress—gold necklaces studded with carbuncles, ear pendants of pearls and rubies, gold bracelets, belts and crowns that are so loaded with precious stones that they glitter in all the colors of the rainbow.—All these masterpieces of our most skilled Gallic goldsmiths I have brought with me for presents.—And seeing that your brother Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, is the most powerful king of all your hordes, the bulk of all those riches—those bracelets, those necklaces and other jewels—would have fallen to you."
Elwig listened to me open-mouthed, her hands clasped together, without endeavoring to hide either the admiration or unbridled greed that the enumeration of such treasures kindled in her breast. Suddenly, however, her features assumed an expression of mingled doubt and anger. She rose, ran to her knife, and returning with it in her hands, raised it over me crying:
"You either lie, or you are mocking me!—Where are those treasures?"
"In a safe place.—I foresaw that I might be killed and plundered before I was able to fulfil the orders of Victoria and her son."