"I wrote again, still more urgently. His answer will soon come."
"But the Ostrogoths?" asked Gibamund, eagerly. "What do they reply?"
"Nothing at all."
"That is bad," said Gibamund.
"I wrote to the Regent: I stated that I was innocent of Hilderic's shameful deed. I warned her against Justinian, who was threatening her no less than us; I reminded her of the close kinship of our nations--"
"You have not yet stooped to entreaties?" asked Zazo, indignantly.
"By no means. I besought nothing. I merely requested, as our just right, that the Ostrogoths at least would not aid our foes. As yet I have had no answer. But worse than the lack of allies, the most perilous thing is the utter, foolish undervaluation of the enemy among our own people," added the King.
"Yes! They say, Why should we weary ourselves with drilling and arming? The little Greeks won't dare to attack us! And if they really do come, the grandsons of Genseric will destroy the grandsons of Basiliscus just as Genseric destroyed him."
"But we are no longer Genseric's Vandals!" Gelimer lamented. "Genseric brought with him an army of heroes, brave, trained by twenty years of warfare with other Germans and with the Romans in the mountains of Spain, simple, plain in tastes, rigid in morals. He closed the houses of Roman pleasure in Carthage; he compelled all women of light fame to marry or enter convents."
"But how that suited the husbands and the other nuns is not told," replied Zazo, laughing.