As she stood near the altar, she thought, would Adalgisa be successful? Would he return to her, repentant and loving? And as she asked herself these questions, behold the sun was overcast, and thunder muttered in the air.
Suddenly Clotilda ran in; her features had told her message of dismay—Adalgisa had wept and prayed in vain.
As she stood there, her first thought was her madness in letting the virgin go; that she could have been so weak as to let him look upon her. Why—why if she prayed and knelt to him, she was but more beautiful, and more surely drew his love upon her. Then she thought that Adalgisa had planned the appeal to the Roman but to escape from her fury. Then suddenly she relents, for the messenger tells how Roman honor has overcome temptation. How the herald has been held sacred, and a free passage given her back to the sacred forest. Her face softens as Clotilda tells how the virgin humbly prays that she may take the vows, and dedicate herself to the service of the Temple. And now again her face is angered; ’tis at the last news the messenger has brought, that Pollione has vowed to tear Adalgisa from the very Temple—from the very altar.
“Let the blood of the base Romans flow,” she cried. Then quickly she turned to the golden shield, the sound of which emulated the rolling thunder, and beat on it three times.
Then arose the sacred answering cry of the Druids, and from all sides came they running towards the sound—masses on masses—their weapons in their hands. On they came—in they rushed, till the whole temple was filled—a forest of angry steel ready to bathe in Roman blood.
“War!” she cried—“extermination—slaughter! Sing ye the hymn of battle.”
Up rose the sacred hymn—high-sounding amidst the waving oaks—floating away on the winds, and threatening the southern invaders. Louder and louder spread the sacred war cry—death, destruction, extermination!—“Let the Romans fall! Let their legions be mown down like grass!—Let the wings of their eagles strike the ground. May our god descend on the rays of the sun to bless and rejoice in the triumph of his faithful children.”
Then she trembles in her passion as she sees the high priest, her own father, prepare to ask the question she knows that he must ask.
“And the victim?”
The victim! When the stern, savage Druids warred, they called for a human victim, as a sacrifice to their gods—as an offering and atonement for their sins—as a sacrifice worthy to propitiate their gods to grant them victory.