"Oh, great bishop! Oh, great St. Remi! Blessings upon you, who, at the basilica of Reims, in the midst of incense and flowers, now over fifty years ago baptized Clovis as a submissive son of the Roman Church! Blessings upon you, St. Remi, the patron of highwaymen and bandits!"
"Where is she? Aye, where is she, the proud and powerful Gaul of the days of the Chief of the Hundred Valleys, of the Sacrovirs, the Vindexes, the Civiles, the Victorias?"
"Who is the present inheritor of Gaul's one-time valor? The Vagres, the 'Wolves-Heads,' the 'Wolves!' It is they alone who still carry on the struggle against the barbarians!"
"And yet we are hunted like wild beasts, put to the rack and hanged if taken!"
"But our nails are sharp and our teeth trenchant to tear to pieces and devour our enemies!"
"And yet they call us robbers!"
"And murderers!"
"And sacrilegious wretches!"
"Brothers, we but follow the example of our glorious new masters—the Frankish kings, dukes and counts; they kill, we massacre; they pillage, we steal; they lay waste, we burn down. Death to the seigniory!"
"Sad are the times in which we live!" said the bishopess as she unloosened her long black tresses to the wind. "These are days of sanguinary fury! days of unbridled debauchery! days of vertigo, in which one rushes into evil paths with wild ecstasy. Oh, holy virtue of our mothers! tender chastity! noble and undefiled love! Where shall we look for you in these days? Shall we look for you in the hut of the female slave whom her masters outrage? Shall we look for you in the house of the free woman, whose very hearth is turned under her own eyes into a brothel? Oh! Let us shut our eyes, and die young! Will you die, my Vagre? To-morrow, at the first rays of the sun; to-morrow, at the hour when the birds awake; to-morrow put your hand in mine, and let us depart together for those unknown worlds, whither our ancestors bravely and willingly took their departure in order to live together!"