"Ah! That's ever the trouble! That was the very trick of the clergy and the royalists during the Revolution—"
"And so, grandfather, that befell to Gaul, centuries ago, that befell to France in 1814 and 1815."
"A foreign invasion!"
"Exactly. The Romans, once vanquished by Brennus, had in the meantime become powerful. They profited by the divisions among our fathers; and they invaded the land—"
"Exactly as the Cossacks and the Prussians invaded us!"
"Exactly so. But what the Cossack and Prussian Kings, the good friends of the Bourbons, did not dare to do—not that they lacked the wish—the Romans did. Despite a heroic resistance, our ancestors, ever brave as lions, but unfortunately divided, were reduced to slavery, as the Negroes are to-day in some colonies."
"Is such a thing possible!"
"Yes. They wore iron collars, bearing the initials of their masters, when those initials were not branded on their foreheads with a hot iron."
"Our fathers!" cried the old man, joining his hands with pain and indignation. "Our fathers!"
"And when they tried to run away, their masters had their noses and ears cropped, if not their hands and feet."