do not know--for you had fallen
senseless,--that when she hurled the curse at you I wrenched myself
free from my ropes, from my martyr's stake, sprang to her into the
midst of the flames, clasped her in my arms, and wished to die with
her. But she thrust me back out of the fire, crying: 'Live, live and
avenge me--and all your kindred--and fulfil the curse upon that Vandal
and all his people!' Again I pressed forward, clasped the dying woman's
hand, and swore it. Your warriors tore me away from her; I saw her fall
back into the flames, and my senses failed.

"But when I recovered consciousness, I was no longer a boy--I
was the avenger! I saw, heard, and felt nothing but that last
clasp of my mother's hand, her glance, and my vow. And I abjured my
religion--apparently. And you, miserable Barbarians, made stupid by
arrogance, you believed that I had done this from cowardice, from fear
of torture and the flames! Oh, how often in former years I have felt
your silent, scarcely-concealed contempt, you foolish simpleton, and
borne it with mortal hatred, with a fury which burned my heart.
Arrogant brood of vain fools! Cowardice, fear, to you the most infamous
of insults, you attributed to me without hesitation. Blind fools! As if
I did not suffer more, ten times more than death in the flames, during
all these years, while ruling myself, enduring without a word of
explanation the scorn of the Carthaginians, the Catholics, for my
apostasy; stifling every emotion of hate and wrath and hope in my
heart, that you might not perceive them, wearing an outward semblance
of stone, while my whole soul was seething with fury, to serve you, to
conduct your blasphemous service of God as your priest, bearing your
insufferable boasting! For you Germans, without boasting aloud (your
loud braggart is easily endured, we despise him), are silent boasters.
You walk over the earth as if you must constantly crush something; you
throw back your heads as if you were greeting and nodding to your
ancestors in heaven: 'Yes, yes, the world belongs to us!' And that you
do not know and feel it, while you are insulting us mortally by such
conduct, because it is a matter of course--is the most unbearable thing
about it. Oh, how I hate you!" He struck with his whip at the figure
walking by his side, who received the blow, but did not seem to feel
it. "You Barbarians, who, a few generations ago, were cattle-thieves on
the frontier of our empire, whom we slaughte