The High Priest was Oroveso; but higher in the awe and veneration of the Gauls stood his daughter Norma. Proud, beautiful, and cold, she stood amongst them, uttering the decrees of their faith, and believed by all to be inspired of God. All bowed before the High Priestess—the spotless virgin.
But ah! was she spotless—pure? No! seen by the Roman Governor but to be loved by him, she had forgotten her state, her holiness—and soon she was his wife.
Yet she was the High Priestess before the people, and the priests trembled as she passed them; while she herself often trembled as she performed the mystic symbolic rites, and she thought of her children. For she had two children—this proud, reverenced, high priestess—children whom she loved when no eyes beheld her but their own; often she ran to their little bedsides when she feared they might have been discovered; but up to the time when their father changed towards her, no one but herself, their father, and the faithful Clotilda, knew of their existence.
For the Roman grew cold to her, and often as she stood high and grand at the altar, her heart was beating. Yet she knew not why he had forsaken her.
Hark to the pompous march! List to the solemn step of marching hundreds! Who are these coming grandly in the night through the sacred grove? These are the Druids, the pure priests dressed in heavy white garments, their holy beards flowing to their chests.
See!—some of them speed to the hill-side to hail the moon’s up-rising, and they call their followers to prayers by the clashing of grave bells. When the moon, the emblem of their God, is throned in the boundless sky, Norma will come to gather the sacred miseltoe clinging to the holy oaks.
Hark, how they vow to destroy and sweep the Romans from the land! Grandly they pass away again, chanting till the still air is full of sound.
But who are these two, flitting from tree to tree?—they are not clothed in flowing white—there is the flash of metal from their limbs. They are not Gaul or Druids, they are Romans.
The one is Pollione—the other Flavio.
“Why comest thou to this sacred forest—has not Norma told thee death lies within?”