PART II
CHAPTER I.
"WOLVES' HEADS."
" 'The devil take the Franks! Long live the Vagrery and Old Gaul!' Such is the cry of all Vagres. The Franks call us 'Wand'ring Men,' 'Wolves,' 'Wolves' Heads.' Let us be wolves!
"My father ran the Bagaudy, and I now run the Vagrery, but both to the one cry—'The devil take the Franks!' and 'Long Live Gaul!'
"Aëlian and Aman, Bagauders in their days, as we in ours are Vagres, in revolt against the Romans, as we against the Franks—Aëlian and Aman, put to death two centuries ago in their old castle near Paris, they are our prophets. We take communion with the wine, the treasures and the wives of the seigneurs, the bishops and rich Gauls who made common cause with the Frankish counts and dukes to whom King Clovis gave our old Gaul. The Franks have pillaged us, they massacred and burned down; so let us do likewise—pillage, massacre and burn! And let us live in joy—'Wolves,' 'Wolves' Heads' and Wand'ring men!' Vagres that we are! Let us live in summer under the green foliage, and in winter in caverns warm!
"Death unto oppressors! Freedom to the slave! Let us take from the seigneurs! Let us give unto the poor!
"What! A hundred kegs of wine in the master's cellar, and only the water of the stream for the wornout slave?
"What! A hundred cloaks in the wardrobe, and only rags for the toiling slave?