Clio - Anatole France

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geometricians from Italy planning roads through the sacred forests. And then he admired the Romans less since he had seen their ships broken against the British cliffs and their legionaries weeping by night on the beach. He continued to exercise sovereignty in Cæsar's name. But to his followers he darkly hinted at the approach of war.

      Three years later the hour had struck: Roman blood had flowed in Genabum. The chieftains allied against Cæsar assembled their fighting men in the Arverni Hills. Komm did not love these chiefs. Rather did he hate them, some because they were richer than he in men, in horses and in lands; others because of the profusion of the gold and the rubies which they possessed; others, again, because they said that they were braver than he and of nobler race. Nevertheless he received their messengers, to whom he gave an oak-leaf and a hazel twig as a sign of affection. And he corresponded with the chiefs who were hostile to Cæsar by means of twigs cut and knotted in such a manner as to be unintelligible save to the Gauls, who knew the language of leaves.

      He uttered no war-cry. But he went to and fro among the villages of the Atrebates, and, visiting the warriors in their huts, to them he said:

      "Three things were the first to be born: man, liberty, light."

      He made sure that, whenever he should utter the war-cry, five thousand warriors of the Morini and four thousand warriors of the Atrebates would at his call buckle on their baldrics of bronze. And, joyfully thinking that in the forest the fire was smouldering beneath its ashes, he secretly passed over to the Treviri in order to win them for the Gallic cause.

      Now, while he was riding with his followers beneath the willows on the banks of the Moselle, a messenger wearing a striped mantle brought him an ash bough bound to a spray of heather, in order to give him to understand that the Romans had suspected his designs and to enjoin him to be prudent. For such was the meaning of the heather tied to the ash. But he continued on his way and entered into the country of the Treviri. Titus Labienus, Cæsar's lieutenant, was encamped there with ten legions. Having been warned that King Commius was coming secretly to visit the chiefs of the Treviri, he suspected that his object was to seduce them from their allegiance to Rome. Having had him followed by spies, he received information which confirmed his suspicions. He then resolved to get rid of this man. He was a Roman, a son of the divine City, an example to the world, and by force of arms he had extended the Roman peace to the ends of the earth. He was a good general and an expert in mathematics and mechanics. During the leisure of peace, beneath the terebinths in the garden of his Campanian villa, he held converse with magistrates touching the laws, the morals and the customs of peoples. He praised the virtues of antiquity and liberty. He read the works of Greek historians and philosophers. His was a rare and polished intellect. And because Komm was a barbarian, unacquainted with things Roman, it seemed to Titus Labienus good and fitting that he should have him assassinated.

      Being informed of the place where he was, he sent to him his master of horse, Caius Volusenus Quadratus, who knew the Atrebate, for they had been commissioned to reconnoitre together the coasts of the isle of Britain before Cæsar's expedition hither; but Volusenus had not ventured to land. Therefore, by the command of Labienus, Cæsar's lieutenant, Volusenus chose a few centurions and took them with him to the village where he knew Komm to be. He could rely upon them. The centurion was a legionary promoted from the ranks, who as a sign of his office carried a vine-stock with which he used to strike his subordinates. His chiefs did what they liked with him. As an instrument of conquest he was second only to the navy. Volusenus said to his centurions:

      "A man will approach me. You will suffer him to advance. I shall hold out my hand to him. At that moment you will strike him from behind, and you will kill him."

      Having given these orders, Volusenus set forth with his escort. In a sunken way, near the village, he met Komm with his followers. The King of the Atrebates, aware that he was suspected, would have turned his horse. But the master of the horse called him by name, assured him of his friendship and held out his hand to him.

      Reassured by those signs of friendship, the Atrebate approached. As he was about to take the proffered hand a centurion struck him on the head with his sword and caused him to fall bleeding from his horse. Then the King's followers threw themselves upon the little band of Romans, scattered them, took up Komm and carried him away to the nearest village, while Volusenus, who believed his task accomplished, crept back to the camp with his horsemen.

      King Komm was not dead. He was carried secretly into the country of the Atrebates, where he was cured of his terrible wound. Having recovered, he took this oath:

      "I swear never to meet a Roman save to kill him." Soon he learnt that Cæsar had suffered a severe defeat at the foot of the Gergovian Mount and forty-six centurions of his army had fallen beneath the walls of the town. Later he was told that the confederates commanded by Vercingétorix were besieged in the country of the Mandubi, at Alesia, a famous Gallic fortress founded by Hercules of Tyre. Then, with a following of warriors, Morini and Atrebates, he marched to the frontier of the Edni, where an army was assembling to relieve the Gauls in Alesia. The army was numbered and was found to consist of two hundred and forty thousand foot and eight thousand horse. The command was entrusted to Virdumar and Eporedorix of the Edni, Vergasillaun of the Averni and Komm of the Atrebates.

      After a long and arduous march, Komm, with his chiefs and fighting-men, reached the mountainous country of the Edni. From the heights surrounding the plateau of Alesia he beheld the Roman camp and the earthworks dug all around it by those little dark men, who waged war with the mattocks and the spade rather than with the javelin and the sword. This seemed to him to augur ill, for he knew that against trenches and machines the Gauls were of less avail than against human breasts. He himself, though well versed in the stratagems of war, understood little of the engineering art of the Romans. After three great battles, during which no break was made in the enemy's fortifications, the terrific rout of the Gauls carried off Komm as a blade of grass is whirled away in a storm. In the mêlée he had perceived Cæsar's red mantle and taken it for an omen of defeat. Now he fled furiously down the track cursing the Romans, but content that the Gallic chieftains, of whom he was jealous, were suffering with him.

      4

      For a year Komm lived in hiding in the forests of the Atrebates. There he was safe, because the Gauls hated the Romans, and having themselves submitted to the conquerors they had a great respect for those who refused them obedience. On the river-bank and in the green-wood, accompanied by his followers, he led a life not differing greatly from that he had lived as the chief of many tribes. He gave himself up to hunting and fishing, devised stratagems and drank fermented drinks, which, though depriving him of the knowledge of human affairs, enabled him to understand those that are divine. But his soul had suffered a change, and it pained him to be no longer free. All the chiefs of his people had been killed in battle, or had died beneath the lash, or, bound by the lictor, had been led away to a Roman prison. No longer did a bitter envy of them possess him; for now all his hatred was concentrated upon the Romans. He bound to his horse's tail the golden circlet which he, as the friend of the Senate and the Roman people, had received from the Dictator. To his dogs he gave the names of Cæsar, Caius and Julius. When he saw a pig he stoned it, calling it Volusenus. And he composed songs like those which he had heard in his youth, eloquently expressing the love of liberty.

      Now, it happened that one day, absorbed in the chase, having wandered away from his followers, he climbed the high, heather-clad table-land which commands Nemetacum, and, gazing thence, he saw with amazement that the huts and stockades of his town had vanished, and that in a wall-encircled enclosure rose temples and houses of an architecture so prodigious as to inspire him with the horror and fear caused by works of magic. For he could not believe that in so short a time such dwellings could have been constructed by natural means.

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