"To arms, ye Gauls, to arms!
"The innocent blood of a virgin flowed for your sakes, and shall not yours flow for the fatherland! To arms! The Romans are here. Strike, Gauls, strike at their heads! Strike hard! See the enemy's blood flow like a stream! It rises up to your knees! Courage! Strike hard! Gauls, strike the Romans! Still harder! Harder still! You see the enemy's blood extend like a lake! It rises up to your chests! Courage! Strike still harder, Gauls! Strike the Romans! Strike harder still! You will rest to-morrow.... To-morrow Gaul will be free! Let, to-day, from the Loire to the ocean, but one cry resound—'To arms!'"
As if carried away by the breath of war, all the tribes dispersed, running to their arms. The moon had gone down; dark night set in. But from all parts of the woods, from the bottoms of the valleys, from the tops of the hills where the signal fires were burning, a thousand voices echoed and re-echoed the chant of the bards:
"To arms! Strike, Gauls! Strike hard at the Romans! To arms!"
* * *
The above truthful account of all that happened at our poor home on the birthday of my glorious Hena, a day that also saw her heroic sacrifice—that account has been written by me, Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, at the last moon of October of the first year that Julius Cæsar came to invade Gaul. I wrote it upon the rolls of white skin that my glorious daughter Hena gave me as a keepsake, and my eldest son, Guilhern has attached to them the keepsake he received from her—the mystic gold sickle of the virgin druid priestess. Let the two ever remain together.
After me, my eldest son Guilhern shall carefully preserve both the writing and the emblem, and after Guilhern, the sons of his sons are charged to transmit them from generation to generation, to the end that our family may for all time preserve green the memory of Hena, the virgin of the Isle of Sen.
(The End.)
THE INFANT'S SKULL;
OR
THE END OF THE WORLD.