"That's all one. It will be enough to entertain me. Besides, I can look at the opposite houses. Our neighbors often sit at their windows. But—hold! It strikes me now—by the way of the houses on the other side of the street, there is a thing I have meant to ask you, and always forgot. Tell me what that sign means which I see before the linendraper's house. What is the meaning of that helmeted warrior throwing his sword into the scales? You who did the carpentering work in the shop, when it was recently renovated, you should know the why and wherefore of its sign."
"I did not know it either until my master detailed me to work in Monsieur Lebrenn's shop."
"All over the quarter people speak of him as a straight-forward man. All the same, what devil of a notion is that of choosing such a looking sign—The Sword of Brennus! If he were an armorer, the thing might pass. True enough, there are scales in the picture, and scales suggest commerce—but why does the warrior with his helmet on and the air of an Artaban throw his sword into the scale?"
"I'll tell you. But really, I feel bashful, at my age, to presume to hold a lecture to you."
"Why bashful? Why that? Instead of going out on Sundays for a walk where people congregate near the fortifications, you read, you learn, you instruct yourself. You may well hold a lecture to your grandfather—there is no harm in that!"
"Well—the warrior with a helmet, that Brennus, was a Gaul, one of our ancestors, the chieftain of the army which, two thousand years and how much more ago I do not know, marched into Italy to attack Rome in order to punish the city for some act of treachery. The city surrendered to the Gauls and was spared in consideration of a ransom in gold. But, not considering the ransom large enough, Brennus threw his sword into the scale that held the weights."
"In order to secure a larger ransom, the shrewd old fellow! He did the opposite of what the fruit-venders do who help the scales in their interest with their thumbs. I understand that part of it. But there are yet two things I do not understand at all. In the first place you said that that warrior, who lived more than two thousand years ago, was one of our ancestors!"
"Yes, that Brennus and the Gauls of his army belonged to the race from which we descend—almost all of us in this country of France."
"One moment—you say they were Gauls?"
"Yes, grandfather."