We are now in the year 1715, and I in the ninety-first year of my life, after having resided here in Holland since the year 1675, and where, in 1680, I married Wilhelmina Vandael, the widow of the shipowner in whose employ I was. In this year Louis XIV, the execrable King of France, died. His reign continued to the end a veritable scourge to the nation. Insurrections followed insurrections, and were smothered in their own blood. Religious persecutions followed upon religious persecutions. The Edict of Nantes by which Henry IV put an end to the religious wars that lasted half a century, was revoked, and the country was again a prey to desolating religious intolerance.
The death of Louis XIV will certainly put an end to the religious persecutions; at least will mitigate them. Thousands of Protestants, banished from France by the reign of terror, will, no doubt, now return to their own country. That pleasure will not be mine. I am too feeble with years to undertake such a voyage. But if, happier than myself, you, my son Alain, should ever return to the cradle of your race, never lose sight of the fact that our family has everything to fear from the Society of Jesus, whose influence seems to be on the ascendant in almost every country.
To you, my son Alain—the son of my old age and my exile—I now bequeath these legends and relics of our family. I bequeath them to you, the younger brother of my son Nominoë, ever lamented, ever wept. Even now my eyes are blurred with tears when I recollect the double suicide of himself and Bertha of Plouernel.
May you, my son Alain, be able to transmit these legends and relics to your descendants! May you soon be able to leave the Republic of Holland, the asylum and refuge of exiles, and return to France. May you witness the realization of the prophecy of Victoria the Great—the downfall of the monarchy, the liberation of Gaul!
May you, son of Joel, live to see the dawn of the day when our country, casting off the foreign name imposed upon her by the Frankish conquest, will re-assume her old name—the Republic of the Gauls, and will shelter herself under the glorious folds of her own ancient red flag, surmounted by the Gallic cock!—Commune and Federation!
Finally, in the event that, having no children, you may be unable to transmit the plebeian legends of our family to your direct descendants, you shall bequeath them to one of the two surviving branches of our family.
The first is that of the Renneponts, an ancestor of whom married at La Rochelle, towards the end of the Sixteenth Century, the daughter of Odelin the armorer, son of Christian the printer. I have had no news from the Rennepont branch of our family for many long years. You will have to inquire after it in La Rochelle, where, until the end of last century I knew them to reside.
The other branch of our family is that of the Gerolsteins, sovereign Princes in Germany, and descendants of Gaëlo the pirate, the grandson of our ancestor Vortigern, who met our ancestor Eidiol, the dean of the Parisian skippers, in the Tenth Century, on the occasion of the siege of Paris by the Northmans. The Princes of Gerolstein continue to reign in Germany, and have remained faithful to the Protestant religion since the time when it was embraced by Prince Charles of Gerolstein, who was the friend of Coligny, and whose son fought at the battle of Roche-la-Belle by the side of our ancestor Odelin, the armorer of La Rochelle.
Either to the Gerolsteins or the Renneponts our family archives and relics will be left by you, in the event of your not living onward in your posterity.
Along with these legends, I bequeath to you and your descendants our family hatred for the Church and for Royalty.