"Welcome, uncle," said Felicitas, giving him her hand.
The broad-brimmed felt hat which he had drawn over his brow to protect his red, fat, shining, good-humoured face, and his stump nose, from the sun, Crispus threw on his neck, so that it hung by the leather strap on his broad back. "May Hygeia never leave thee, my daughter; the Graces never forsake thee, their fourth sister. Yes, the Germans! A horseman came last night with secret information for the Tribune. But two hours after we knew it all, we, early guests at the Baths of Amphitrite. The rider is a Wascon; no Wascon keeps his mouth closed if you pour wine therein. A battle has been fought at the ford of the Isar: our troops have fled, the watch-tower of Vada is burnt. The barbarians have crossed the river."
"Bah!" laughed Fulvius, "that is yet far away. Go, darling, prepare a cooling drink for our uncle--thou knowest what he likes: not too much water! And if they come, they will not eat us. They are fierce giants in battle--children after the victory. Have I not lived months among them as their prisoner? I fear nothing from them."
"Nothing for thyself--but for this sweet wife?"
Felicitas did not hear this question; she had taken up the child and gone with it into the house.
Fulvius shook his curly locks. "No! They would do nothing to her, that is not their custom. Certainly, did I fall, she would not be long left a widow. But there are people not in the bearskins of the barbarians, who would willingly tear her from the arms of her husband."
And he seized angrily the hammer in his belt.
"She must not suspect anything of it, the pure heart!" continued he.
"Certainly not. But thou must be on the watch. I met the Tribune lately in the office of the old money-lender."
"The usurer! the blood-sucker!"