"But I suppose you did not think your uncle's life would be sufficiently safe under my protection, Herculanus, since you were so eager to join us?" asked the Tribune.

Before the nephew could answer, Ausonius interrupted: "But--thank the gods--our campaign will be bloodless: the Barbarians have abandoned the country. Where can they have gone? What have you learned through your spies of the movements of the enemy?"

"Nothing. That is the mysterious part of it. It seems as though the earth had swallowed them. They are said to have numerous subterranean passages and cellars, in which they conceal their provisions and themselves in times of danger. We found it very difficult to obtain spies among our colonists on the southern shore. They know very well that we Romans come and go; the Alemanni remain in the country, and they fear their vengeance. And deserters can no longer be had. In former wars they were often mentioned. But the fact that there are no renegades shows that self-reliance is increasing and the dread or hope of Rome is declining. I could get only two volunteers--for a large sum of money--to venture upon a reconnoitring expedition; the one who went to the East returned without having seen a sign of the foe; the one dispatched to the North has not yet appeared. And unfortunately we have not taken even one prisoner. Not a sign of a human footprint have we seen on the whole march along the lake. Once, it is true, I thought I saw a light column of smoke rising from the dense growth of rushes which stretches for leagues into the lake, and ordered the troops to halt; but the tiny cloud instantly vanished."

"I can understand the strategy of our admirable General only by crediting him with an almost offensive degree of caution," sneered the commander of the mailed horsemen. "By Hercules! Wherever they may hide, the Barbarians cannot be a day's march from us."

"Yes," Ausonius assented. "Yet I should think we might be strong enough to seek them and drive them from their hiding places."

Saturninus frowned slightly. "Your nephew's opinion of my courage gives me no concern. But you, Prefect, have again forgotten that, by the Emperor's orders, we are not to disperse the Barbarians, but to surround them and force them to submission. We are too weak for this encircling, and must wait for the ships. Unless our fleet should block the lake, they will again escape, as they have often done, in their boats. Stick to your hexameters, my Pierian friend, and leave the Barbarians to me: it will be better for all concerned."

"Except the Barbarians!" replied Ausonius smiling, extending his hand to his friend.

"Who are probably the leaders of the enemy?"

"The Romans on the southern shore mention two names. The rest of the Alemanni provinces are mainly ruled by kings."

"So far do Germans carry royalty," nodded the learned Prefect. "May they always continue to be divided into numberless provinces under their hedge kings and village magistrates, whom each man obeys as much as he chooses."

"It seems that this state of things has changed. Many provinces are united in leagues, which hold together in peace as well as in war. The men of Linzgau have no king now, it appears, only an aged count. But he must be a man of powerful intellect, since the gray-haired Hariowald has been chosen commander-in-chief of all the provinces leagued against us. True, we have not to deal solely with the Lentienses. After centuries of folly these Barbarians are beginning to discover that 'liberty,' that is, the privilege of doing what each man pleases without regard to his neighbor, is, though a delightful, a somewhat dangerous pleasure, and that with such 'liberty' they will be forever our bondmen, so long as one province looks on with malicious pleasure while we subjugate another with which it has had a quarrel--till its own turn comes. Formerly they preferred to place their surplus of young men at our disposal rather than have them obey the commands of one of their own people, but for some time there has been a change; even those splendid soldiers, my Batavians, no longer wish to remain with me, and will not renew their oath of service. We no longer hear the names of numberless small peoples: five or six great leagues fill the whole country from the Ister to the Suabian Sea. It has long made me uneasy. That old man is now the commander-in-chief of all the Germans allied against us."

"Commander-in-chief of the Alemanni!"

"Don't laugh at them, Ausonius! Ay, this leadership of the woodland war has cost us much blood and many a dear-bought victory, since the days of that Quinctilius Varus. As the white-beard is said to be the head, a young relative of his is called the arm, the sword, the fire-brand of the conflict."

"What is his name?"

"Attalus."

"Adalo! That was one of Bissula's playmates. She often mentioned him. I saw him frequently; he looked at me defiantly enough. Could it be he?"

"The women and men at our stations along the lake cannot say enough in praise of his beauty and strength."

"Well, hitherto neither the warlike wisdom of the old man nor the warlike zeal of the young one has showed itself," sneered Herculanus.

"Yes," laughed Ausonius. "Their wisdom is the resolve to run away, and their zeal the energy with which they execute the decision."

But the Tribune, with frowning brow, cried: "Such speeches drive away the goddess of victory and summon the avenger of foolhardiness. Jeer after we have conquered--and even then, it is wiser not to do it. Nemesis sleeps lightly."

"If you cannot discover where the Barbarians are hiding, what will you do?"

"Seek them until I do find them and bring them to a halt."

"But then," cried Herculanus, "let there be no treaties, no mercy, nothing save extermination. How often these faithless people have broken the peace! Our legions are full of fury against the Barbarians who, year after year, compel them to march through these horrible marshy forests. Only the extirpation of the last German will give peace to the Roman Empire." He clenched his fist threateningly.

"You have perhaps uttered words of prophecy," said Saturninus thoughtfully, "but in a different sense from what you intended."

"He has uttered abominable words!" cried Ausonius, filling his goblet. "And they are utterly groundless. Ay, more than a century ago it looked as if the Persians and Germans under Gallienus would flood the Eastern and the Western Empire. But since that time Eternal Rome has grown young once more. Your brave countrymen, my Saturninus, the heroic Illyrian emperors, have curbed the barbarians on the Euphrates, the Rhine, and the Ister. Diocletian has remodelled the internal affairs of the Empire; and so I might adapt to Rome's mastery of the world the proud words of my colleague Horace: 'He did not lack talent, but he possessed little learning.'"

"Do they belong to poetry?" asked Saturninus doubtfully.

But the eager speaker, without hearing his words, continued: "What he said concerning the permanence and spread of his own renown I will apply to the glory of Rome: it will increase and grow, so long as the priest ascends the hill to the Capitol with the silent Virgin. The Vestal," he added in explanation.

"H'm," observed the Illyrian, "only it's a pity that the hypothesis is no longer apt."

"What? How so?"

"The pious Constantine, of murderous memory (I hear they want to canonize the assassin of his mother and his wife) prohibited or restricted the offering of sacrifices at the Capitol, and your pupil and patron, Gratianus, recently abolished the Vestals."