"Who was it planted the vine? Who harvested the grape and pressed it into wine? The slave! Who should drink the wine? The slave!
"Who was it that tended and sheared the sheep and wove the cloth and made the cloak? The slave!
"Who should wear the cloak? The slave!
"Up, ye poor and oppressed! Up! Revolt! Here are your good friends the Vagres! They approach! Death to the seigneurs and the bishops!
"Six men united are stronger than a hundred divided: Let us unite! Each for all, and all for each! 'The devil take the Franks! Long live the Vagrery and Old Gaul!' "
Who sang this song? Ronan the Vagre. Where did he sing it? On a mountain path that led to the city of Clermont in Auvergne, that grand and beautiful Auvergne, land of magnificent traditions—Bituit, who gave Roman legions to his pack of hounds for breakfast in the morning; the Chief of the Hundred Valleys! Vindex! and so many other heroes of Gaul, were they not all sons of Auvergne? of the beautiful Auvergne, to-day the prey of Clotaire, the most odious, the most ferocious of the four sons of Clovis?
Other voices answered in chorus to the song of Ronan the Vagre. They had met on a mild summer's night; there were about thirty Vagres gathered at the spot—gay customers, rough boys, clad in all styles, but armed to the teeth, and all carrying in their caps a twig of green oak as the emblem of their solidarity.
They arrive at a place where the roads fork—one road leads to the right, another to the left. Ronan halts. A voice is heard—the voice of Wolf's-Tooth. What a Titan the man is! He is six feet high, with the neck of a bull and enormous hands; only the hoop of a barrel could encircle his waist:
"Ronan, you said to us: 'Brothers, arm yourselves!' We armed ourselves. 'Furnish yourselves with torches of straw!' Here are the torches. 'Follow me!' We did. You halt; and we have halted."
"Wolf's-Tooth, I am considering. Now, brothers, answer me. Which is to be preferred, the wife of a Frankish count or a bishopess?"