Clio. Anatole France

their crowns as tokens of their friendship with Rome.

      He was not execrated by the Atrebates. His sagacious and self-interested behaviour did not discredit him with a people devoid of Greek and Roman ideas of patriotism and citizenship. These savage, inglorious Gauls, ignorant of public life, esteemed cunning, yielded to force and marvelled at royal power, which seemed to them a magnificent innovation. The majority of these people, rough woodlanders or fishermen of the misty coast, had a still better reason for not blaming the conduct and the prosperity of their chieftain; not knowing that they were Atrebates, nor even that Atrebates existed, the King of the Atrebates concerned them but little. Wherefore Komm was not unpopular. And if the favour of Rome meant danger to him, that danger did not come from his own people.

      Now in the fourth year of the war, towards the end of summer, Cæsar armed a fleet for a descent upon Britain. Desiring to secure allies in the great Island, he resolved to send Komm as his ambassador to the Celts of the Thames, with the offer of an alliance with Rome. Sagacious, eloquent and by birth akin to the Britons—for certain tribes of the Atrebates had settled on both banks of the Thames—Komm was eminently fitted for this mission.

      Komm was proud of his friendship with Cæsar. But he was in no hurry to discharge this mission, of the dangers of which he was fully aware. To induce him to undertake it Cæsar was compelled to grant him many favours. From the tribute paid by other Gallic towns he exempted Nemetacum, which was already growing into a city and a metropolis, so rapidly did the Romans develop the countries which they conquered. He somewhat relaxed the rigorous rule of the conquerors by restoring to it its rights and its own laws. Further, he gave Komm to rule over the Morini, who were the neighbours of the Atrebates on the sea-shore.

      Komm set sail with Caius Volusenus Quadratus, prefect of cavalry, appointed by Cæsar to conduct a reconnaissance in Britain. But when the ship approached the sandy beach at the foot of the bird-haunted white cliffs, the Roman refused to disembark, fearing unknown danger and certain death. Komm landed with his horses and his followers and spoke to the British chiefs who had come to meet him. He counselled them to prefer profitable friendship with the Romans to their pitiless wrath. But these chiefs, the descendants of Hu, the Powerful, and of his comrades in arms, were proud and violent. They listened impatiently to Komm's words. Anger clouded their woad-stained countenances, and they swore to defend their Island against the Romans.

      "Let them land here," they cried, "and they will disappear like the snow on the sand of the sea-shore when the south wind blows upon it."

      Holding Cæsar's counsel to be an insult, they were already drawing their daggers from their belts and preparing to put to death the herald of shame.

      Standing bowed over his shield in the attitude of a suppliant, Komm invoked the name of brother by which he was entitled to call them. They were sons of the same fathers.

      Wherefore the Britons forbore to slay him. They conducted him in chains to a great village near the coast. Passing down a road bordered by huts of wattle-work, he noticed high flat stones, fixed in the ground at irregular intervals, and covered with signs which he thought to be sacred, for it was not easy to decipher their meaning. He perceived that the huts of this great village, though poorer, were not unlike those of the villages of the Atrebates. In front of the chiefs' dwellings poles were erected from which hung the antlers of deer, the skulls of boars and the fair-haired heads of men. Komm was taken into a hut which contained nothing save a hearthstone still covered with ashes, a bed of dried leaves and the image of a god shapen from the trunk of a lime-tree. Bound to the pillar which supported the thatched roof, the Atrebate meditated on his ill luck and sought in his mind for some magic word of power or some ingenious device which should deliver him from the wrath of the British chieftains.

      And to beguile his wretchedness, after the manner of his ancestors, he composed a song of menace and complaint, coloured by pictures of his native woods and mountains, the memory of which filled his heart.

      Women with babes at the breast came and looked at him curiously and questioned him as to his country, his race and his adventures. He answered them kindly. But his soul was sad and wracked by cruel anxiety.

[1] The modern Arras.—Trans.

      2

      Detained until the end of summer on the Morini shore, Cæsar set sail one night about the third watch, and by the fourth hour of day had sight of the Island. The Britons awaited him on the beach. But neither their arrows of hard wood nor their scythed chariots, nor their long-haired horses trained to swim in the sea among the shoals, nor their countenances made terrible with paint gave check to the Romans. The Eagle surrounded by legionaries touched the soil of the barbarians' Island. The Britons fled beneath a shower of stone and lead hurled from machines which they believed to be monsters. Struck with terror, they ran like a herd of elks before the spear of the hunter.

      When towards evening they had reached the great village near the coast, the chiefs sat down on stones ranged in a circle by the road-side and took counsel. All night they continued to deliberate; and when dawn began to gleam on the horizon, while the larks' song pierced the grey sky, they went into the hut where Komm of the Atrebates had been enchained for thirty days. They looked at him respectfully because of the Romans. They unbound him. They offered him a drink made of the fermented juice of wild cherries. They restored to him his weapons, his horses, his comrades, and, addressing him with flattering words, they entreated him to accompany them to the camp of the Romans and to ask pardon for them from Cæsar the Powerful.

      "Thou shalt persuade him to be our friend," they said to him, "for thou art wise and thy words are nimble and penetrating as arrows. Among all the ancestors whose memory is enshrined in our songs, there is not one who surpasses thee in sagacity."

      It was with joy Komm of the Atrebates heard these words. But he concealed his pleasure, and, curling his lips into a bitter smile, he said to the British chiefs, pointing to the fallen willow leaves that were driven in eddies by the wind:

      "The thoughts of vain men are stirred like these leaves and ceaselessly carried in every direction. Yesterday they took me for a madman and said I had eaten of the herb of Erin that maddens the grazing beasts. To-day they perceive in me the wisdom of their ancestors. Nevertheless I am as good a counsellor one day as another, for my words depend neither upon the sun nor upon the moon, but upon my understanding. As the reward of your ill-doing, I ought to deliver you up to the wrath of Cæsar, who would cut off your hands and put out your eyes, so that begging bread and beer in the wealthy villages you would testify to his might and justice throughout the Island of Britain. Notwithstanding I will forget the wrong you have done me. I will remember that we are brethren, that the Britons and the Atrebates are the fruit of the same tree. I will act for the good of my brethren who drink the waters of the Thames. Cæsar's friendship, which I came to their Island to offer them, I will restore to them now that they have lost it through their folly. Cæsar, who loves Komm, and has made him to be King over the Atrebates and the Morini who wear collars of shells, will love the British chiefs, painted with glowing colours, and will establish them in their wealth and power, because they are the friends of Komm, who drinketh the waters of the Somme."

      And Komm of the Atrebates spake again and said: "Learn from me that which Cæsar shall say unto you when you bend over your shields at the foot of his tribunal and that which it behooveth you in your wisdom to reply unto him. He will say unto you: 'I grant you peace. Deliver up to me noble children as hostages.' And you will make answer: 'We will deliver up unto you our noble children. And we will bring you certain of them this very day. But the greater number of our noble children are in the distant places of this Island, and to bring them hither will take many days.'"

      The chiefs marvelled at the subtle mind of the Atrebate. One of them said to him:

      "Komm, thou art possessed of a great understanding, and I believe thy heart to be filled with kindness toward thy British brethren who drink the waters of the Thames. If Cæsar were a man, we should have courage to fight