these peaceful Gauls knew very little of Iahveh
and his son.

"But now behold fires looming on the horizon, and ashes driven by the
wind fall within our forest glades. Peasants come driving a long file of
waggons along the roads or urging their flocks before them. Cries of
terror rise from the villages, 'The Burgundians are upon us!'

"Now one horseman is seen, lance in hand, clad in shining bronze, his
long red hair falling in two plaits on his shoulders. Then come two,
then twenty, then thousands, wild and blood-stained; old men and
children they put to the sword, ay, even aged grandams whose grey hairs
cleave to the soles of the slaughterer's boots, mingled with the brains
of babes new-born. My young Gaul and his young freed-woman stain with
their blood the couch broidered with narcissi. The barbarians burn the
basilicas to roast their oxen whole, shatter the amphorae, and drain the
wine in the mud of the flooded cellars. Their women accompany them,
huddled, half naked, in their war chariots. When the Senate, the
dwellers in the cities, and the leaders of the churches had perished in
the flames, the Burgundians, soddened with wine, lay down to slumber
beneath the arcades of the Forum. Two weeks later one of them might have
been seen smiling in his shaggy beard at the little child whom, on the
threshold of their dwelling, his fair-haired spouse gathers in her arms;
while another, kindling the fire of his forge, hammers out his iron with
measured stroke; another sings beneath the oak tree to his assembled
comrades of the gods and heroes of his race; and yet others spread out
for sale stones fallen from Heaven, aurochs' horns, and amulets. And the
former inhabitants of the country, regaining courage little by little,
crept from the woods where they had fled for refuge, and returned to
rebuild their burnt-down cabins, plough their fields, and prune their
vines.

"Once more life resumed its normal course; but those times were the most
wretched that mankind had yet experienced. The barbarians swarmed over
the whole Empire. Their ways were uncouth, and as they nurtured feelings
of vengeance and greed, they firmly believed in the ransom of sin.

"The fable of Iahveh and his son pleased them, and they believed it all
the more easily in that it was taught them by the Romans whom they knew
to be wiser than themselves, and to whose arts and mode of life they
yielded secret admiration. Alas! the heritage of Greece and Rome had