"And it is with such unconcern that you speak of the Roman invasion of Gaul?" cried the traveler.
"Never have the Breton Gauls been invaded by strangers," proudly answered the brenn of the tribe of Karnak. "We shall remain spotless of the taint. We are independent of the Gauls of Piotou, of Touraine, of Orleans and of the other sections of the land, just as they are independent of us. They have not asked for our help. We are not so constituted as to offer ourselves to their chiefs and to fight under them. Let everyone guard his own honor and his own province. The Romans are in Touraine ... but it is a long way from Touraine to here."
"So that if the pirates of the North were to kill your son Albinik the sailor and his brave wife Meroë, it would no wise concern you because the murder was committed far from here?"
"You are joking. My son is my son.... The Gauls of provinces other than mine are not my sons!"
"Are they not, like yourself, the sons of the same god, as the druid religion teaches you? If that is so, are not all the Gauls your brothers? And does not the subjugation, does not the blood of a brother cry for vengeance? Are you unconcerned because the enemy is not at the very gates of your own homestead? On that principle, the hand, even when it knows that the foot is gangrened, could say to itself: 'As to me, I am well, and the foot is far from the hand—I need not worry over the disease.' And the gangrene, not being stopped, rises from the foot to the other members, until the whole body perishes."
"Unless the healthy hand take an axe," said the brenn, "and cut off the foot from which the evil proceeds."
"And what becomes of the body that is thus mutilated, Joel?" put in Mamm' Margarid who all the while had been listening in silence. "When the best regions of the country shall have been invaded by the stranger, what will then become of the rest of Gaul? Thus mutilated and dismembered, how will she defend herself against her enemies?"
"The worthy spouse of my host speaks wisely," said the traveler respectfully to Mamm' Margarid; "like all Gallic matrons she holds her place at the public council as well as at her hearth."
"You speak truly," rejoined Joel, "Margarid has a brave heart and a wise head. Often her opinion is better than mine.... I gladly say so.... But this time I am right. Whatever may happen to the rest of Gaul, never will the Romans set foot in our old Britanny. There are her rocks, her marshes, her woods, her sand banks—above all her Bretons to defend her."
At these words of her husband Mamm' Margarid shook her head disapprovingly; all the men of the family, however, loudly applauded their brenn's words.