red, enslaved, threw
to the beasts by hundreds of thousands,--naked, starving beggars
who gratefully picked up the crumbs flung to them by Roman
generosity,--hence with you all, all, you wolves, you bulls, you bears,
whom only bestial strength and God's permission--as a punishment for
our sins--allowed to break into the Roman Empire! Hence with you!" He
again raised his whip to strike, but seeing a Herulian warrior's eye
fixed threateningly upon him, he lowered his arm in embarrassment.

Gelimer remained silent, except for frequent sighs.

"And your conscience?" he now said very gently. "Has it never rebuked
you? I since escaping the lion--I have trusted you entirely, I laid my
heart in your hands, you became my confessor; did you feel no shame
then?"

A scarlet flush dyed the priest's pallid face for an instant, but it
passed like a flash of lightning. The next moment he answered:

"Yes! So foolish was my heart--often. Especially at first. But," he
went on wrathfully, "I always conquered this weakness by saying to
myself whenever I felt it, and your insulting arrogance made me feel it
daily (oh, that Zazo! I hated him most of all): They deem you so base
that, in the presence of the dead bodies of all your kindred, you
abjured your faith! These insolent, incredibly stupid Barbarians--but
it is arrogance, even more than stupidity--believe that you, you, the
son of these parents, could really be devoted to them, could forget
your martyrs, to serve them and their brutal, imperious splendor. They
think that you can be so inconceivably base! Avenge yourself, punish
them for this unbearable presumption! Oh, hate, too, is a joy, the
hatred of nation for nation! And so long as a drop of blood flows in
the veins of other nations, you Germans must be hated, unto death,
until you are trampled under foot."

He dealt a heavy blow with his clenched fist upon the uncovered head of
the tottering King. Gelimer did not look up, did not even start.

"What threat are you muttering in your beard?" asked Verus, bending
toward him.

"I was only praying, 'As we forgive our debtors.' But perhaps that,
too, is vanity, sin. Perhaps--you are not my debtor. Perhaps you are
really," again he shuddered, "my angel, whom God sends, not to protect
me, as I supposed in my vanity, but in punishment."

"I was not your _good_ angel," laughed the other.

"But--if I may ask--?"

"Ask on! I want to enjoy this hour to the utmost."

"If you hated m