"Oh! father, one is seized as with a vertigo in thinking of the age that those monumental stones must have."
"Only God knows it, my friends! If we are to judge of their future by their past, myriads of generations will yet succeed one another at the feet of those gigantic monuments, which seem to defy the tooth of time, and upon which the eyes of our fathers have so often rested from century to century in pious meditation."
"And why did they make the pilgrimage, father?"
"Because the cradle of our family, the fields and the homesteads of the first of our ancestors of whom these manuscripts make mention, were situated near the stones of Karnak. As you will see, that ancestor was named Joel, en Brenn an Lignez an Karnak, which, as you know, means Joel, the chief of the tribe of Karnak. He was the chief or patriarch, chosen by his tribe, or by his clan, as the Scotch call it."[12]
"Accordingly," interjected George Duchene, "your name, father, the name of Brenn, means chief?"
"Yes, my friend, that honorable appellation, attached to the name of each individual, to his baptismal name, as the saying is since the advent of Christianity, has in the course of time been transformed into a family name. The custom of family names does not begin to be generally observed among plebeian families until towards the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century. In earlier days, the son of the first of our ancestors, for instance, whom I mentioned to you, was called Guilhern, mab eus an Brenn—Guilhern, the son of the chief—then Kirio, grandson of the chief, and so on. In the course of time the words grandson and great-grandson were suppressed, and the only name added to the word Brenn, which was corrupted into Lebrenn, was the baptismal one. Accordingly, almost all the names taken from a trade—as Carpenter, Smith, Baker, Weaver, Miller, etc., etc.—have their origin in some manual occupation, the designation of which has been converted in the course of time into a family appellation. These explanations may seem trivial; they nevertheless attest a grave and painful fact—the absence of a real family name with our brothers of the masses of the people. Alas! So long as they were slaves or serfs, could people who did not belong to themselves have a patronymic? Their masters dubbed them with bizarre and grotesque nicknames, as one gives to a horse or a dog such names as suit his whim. When the slave was sold to a new master he was dressed up in a new name. But, as you will see, in the measure that, thanks to their energetic and unflagging struggle, the oppressed arrived at a less servile state, the consciousness of their dignity as human beings developed apace. When, finally, they could have a name of their own and transmit the same to their children, however obscure, yet always honorable, it was a sign that they were slaves no longer, nor yet serfs, although still steeped in wretchedness. The conquest of a proper, or family name, has been, by reason of the duties it imposes and the rights that it gives, one of the longest steps taken by our ancestors in the direction of their complete emancipation. In the manuscripts that we are about to read you will encounter an admirable sentiment of the Gallic nationality and of its religious faith—a sentiment all the more irrepressible, all the more exaggerated, perhaps, by reason of the Roman and Frankish conquests being felt as galling yokes by those heroic men and women, who were so proud of their race and who carried their contempt for death to the point of superhuman grandeur. Let us admire them, let us emulate them in their ardent love for their country, in their implacable hatred of oppression, in their belief in the progressive continuity of life which delivers us from the disease of death. But, while piously glorifying the past, let us continue, in step with the movement of mankind, to march towards the future. Let us apt forget that a New World began with Christianity. Unquestionably its divine spirit of fraternity, equality and freedom has been outrageously belied, trampled in the dirt, and persecuted since the first centuries of its era by most of the Catholic bishops, who were themselves holders of slaves, and were gorged with wealth that they wheedled from the conquering Franks, in return for the absolution of their abominable crimes which the high clergy sold to them. It could be no otherwise than that our fathers, seeing the evangelical word smothered and impotent to deliver them, took matters into their own hands, rose in rebellion and in arms against the tyranny of the conquerors, and almost always, as you will find proof in these manuscripts, where sermons only suffered shipwreck, revolt secured some lasting concession. It happened obedient to the time-honored behest—Help yourself, and heaven will help you. Nevertheless, despite the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, the breath of Christianity has passed over the world, and warms it more and more with that sweet and tender warmth which, notwithstanding all its grandeur, the druidic faith of our ancestors was lacking in. Thus rejuvenated and completed, our old druid belief is bound to receive a fresh impetus. It no doubt was a trying experience for us to undergo, the loss of even the name of our nationality, and to see the name of France substituted for that of our old and illustrious Gaul by a horde of ferocious conquerors.
"No doubt the Gallic Republic would sound no less pleasant to our ears than the French Republic. But our first and immortal Republic has sufficiently cleansed the French name of whatever monarchic odor clung to it, by carrying its colors triumphantly over all the lands of Europe. Moreover, my friends," added the merchant with his habitual smile, "the same thing happens to that old and brave Gaul as happened to her own heroic women who rendered themselves illustrious under their husband's name—although, to be sure, the marriage of Gaul with the Frank came about in a singularly forced manner."
"I understand that, father," observed Velleda, also smiling. "The same as many women sign their own family name beside the one they hold from their husband, all the admirable deeds performed by our heroine under a name that was not her own should be signed—FRANCE, born GAUL."
"An excellent comparison," remarked Madam Lebrenn. "Our name might change, our race has remained our race."
"And now," resumed Marik Lebrenn with deep emotion, "now that you are initiated into the family tradition which founded our plebeian archives, do you, my children take the solemn pledge to perpetuate them, and to cause your children to follow your example? Do you, my son, and you, my daughter, in default of him, pledge yourselves to register in all sincerity the deeds and events of your own lives, be they just or unjust, praiseworthy or blamable, to the end that the day when you depart from this existence to another, the narrative of your own life may increase our family chronicles, and that the inexorable sense of justice of our descendants may praise or condemn our memory, according as we shall have deserved?"