Adalo nodded.
"Be welcome! We expected such a messenger. You desire peace?"
The young hero angrily flung back his handsome head so that his long locks rested on his shoulders, and answered with flashing eyes: "I offer to let you depart unmolested."
"Ha, insolent Barbarian!" cried Herculanus.
But Saturninus wrathfully motioned to him to keep silence, and then asked very quietly: "Are we surrounded?"
"Not yet; but only because we did not desire it."
Saturninus cast a significant glance at the Prefect.
"Boasting!" replied the latter in Greek.
"And why haven't you destroyed us yet?" sneered Herculanus.
"The result, Roman, is in the hands of the gods. We have not attacked because we, who do not fear battle, but rather--you know well--love it, this time desire peace; or our wise leaders, who think further than my comrades, desire it. The great league of the Alemanni wishes to end forever by a treaty not only this campaign but the whole war with you, which for generations has been burning or at least smouldering: we wish not a truce, but peace with Rome."