"I shall wait here at the door—that is a subaltern's place."
"Would you believe it, Schanvoch," Marion replied laughing, "would you believe that it is nearly twenty years that lad and I live together and quarrel like two brothers? He will not forget that I am a captain, and will not treat me as a simple anvil-beater, as he formerly used to."
"I am not the only one, Marion, to realize the difference there is between us," Eustace answered. "You are one of the most renowned captains in the army—I am only one of the least of its soldiers."
Saying this Eustace sat down on a stone near the door, and bit his nails.
"He is incorrigible," the captain remarked to me; and we two entered the house of Victoria.
"Captain Marion must be strangely blinded by friendship," I thought to myself, "to fail to perceive that his companion is consumed with malevolent jealousy."
The residence of the Mother of the Camps was extremely simple. Captain Marion having asked one of the soldiers on guard whether Victorin could receive him, the soldier answered that he could give him no information on that head, seeing that the young general had not spent the night in the house.
Despite the camp life, Marion preserved great austerity of morals. He seemed shocked to learn that Victorin had not yet returned home, and he cast a dissatisfied look at me. I wished to excuse Victoria's son, and said to him:
"Let us not be hasty in believing evil. Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony, arrived yesterday at the camp. It may be that Victorin spent the night in conference with him."
"So much the better. I would like to see that young man, who to-day is chief of the Gauls, free himself from the claws of that pest of profligacy that drives so many of us to evil deeds. As to myself, the moment I see a woman's bonnet or a short skirt, I turn my head away as if I saw the devil in person."