" 'This evening we say: How many were there of these barbarous hordes? This evening we say: How many were there of these Franks?' "
"Schanvoch, another of your ancestors, a brave soldier and foster-brother of Victoria the Great, sang that song—"
"Yes, Gaul, on that day proud, free and triumphant, had just driven the barbarians from both banks of the Rhine, while, to-day—but let us drop that topic, monk; if those days were glorious, the present ones seem to me all the more horrible. Oh! blameworthy was the credulity of our fathers, martyrs to this new religion—"
"Our fathers could not choose but place faith in the words of the first apostles, who preached to them love for their fellow men, the pardon of sins, the deliverance of the slaves, in the name of the young master of Nazareth, whom your ancestress Genevieve saw crucified in Jerusalem—"
"My ancestress Genevieve? You seem to be informed on every particular detail concerning my family. Only my father could have instructed you on such matters—you must have known him! Answer me!"
"Yes, I knew your father. Did you never notice, after you entered the heart of Auvergne, that from time to time your father absented himself for several days?"
"Yes, he did—I never knew the reason."
"Your father, each such time, went to visit a poor female slave near Tulle. She was bound to the glebe of the bishop of that city. That female slave, it is now at least thirty years ago, one day found your father Karadeucq, who was then the chief of the Bagauders, wounded and in a dying condition in a hedge along the road. She took pity upon him; she helped him to drag himself to the hut which she inhabited with her mother. Your father was then about twenty years of age—the young female slave was of about the age of that child who is asleep near us. The two loved each other. Shortly after he was well again, your father was one day discovered in the slave's hut by the bishop's superintendent. The man considered Karadeucq a good prize and sought to take him as a slave to Tulle. Your father resisted, beat the agent, and fled and rejoined the Bagauders. The young slave became a mother—she gave birth to a son—"
"I then have a brother!"
"The son of a female slave is born a slave and belongs to his mother's master. When the boy, whom your father named Loysik in remembrance of his Breton extraction, was four or five years old, the bishop of Tulle, who had noticed in the child certain precocious qualities, had him taken to the episcopal college, where he was brought up with several other young slaves who were all to become clerks of the Church. From time to time Karadeucq went at night to visit the mother of his son at Tulle. The boy being always notified in advance by his mother, always found some means of repairing to his mother's hut on such occasions. There the father and the son held long conversations concerning the men and things of the olden days of Gaul when the country was glorious and free. Your father preserved as a family tradition an ardent and sacred love for Gaul. He strove to cause his son's heart to beat proudly at the grand recollections of the past, to exasperate him against the Franks, and some day to take him along to run the Vagrery with him. But Loysik, who was of a quiet and rather retiring disposition, feared such an adventurous life. Years passed. Had your brother so desired, he could have won honors and riches, as so many others did, by consecrating himself to the Church. But shortly before being ordained a priest, he had the opportunity of gaining so close a view of the clerical hypocrisy, cupidity and profligacy, that he declined to enter priesthood and he cursed the sacrilegious alliance of the Gallic clergy with the conquerors. He left the episcopal house and went to the frontier of Provence, where he joined the hermit-laborers. He was previously acquainted with one of their set, who had stopped for several weeks at the episcopal alms-house for his cure."