"Yes, grandfather; but soon they realized that to forget one's sorrows does not deliver one therefrom; that to break the yoke is better."
"Right they were!"
"Accordingly, the Gauls, after innumerable insurrectionary efforts—"
"Well, my boy, meseems the method is not new, but ever is the right one. Ha! Ha!" added the old man, striking the bowl of his pipe with his nail. "Ha! Ha! Do you notice, George, sooner or later, it has to come to a Revolution—so it was in '89—so it was in 1830—so it may be to-morrow, perhaps!"
"Poor grandfather!" thought George to himself. "He little knows how near the truth he is."
And he proceeded aloud:
"Right you are! When it comes to the matter of freedom, the people must help themselves, and stick their own fingers into the dish—otherwise there will be only crumbs to pick, and the people will be robbed, as they were robbed eighteen years ago."
"And brazenly were they robbed, my poor boy! I saw it done, myself. I was there."
"Fortunately you know the proverb, grandfather—The scalded cat—enough said. The lesson will have been a good one. But to return to our Gauls. They did as you say—resorted to Revolution. She never leaves her children in the lurch. The latter, by dint of perseverance, of energy and of their own blood copiously poured out, succeeded in re-conquering a portion of their former freedom from the mailed hand of the Romans, who, moreover, had not un-christened Gaul, but only called her 'Roman' Gaul."
"Just as we to-day speak of French Algeria, I suppose?"