CHAPTER XIV.SACROVIR'S BIRTHDAY.

"And yet to see what we see, mother!" cried the youth. "To think that father, our dear father, a man of such integrity and courage, of such tried patriotism, finds himself at this hour in a convict's prison! To know that our enemies derive an insane joy from the prolongation of his undeserved sufferings!"

"In what way does that affect the honor, courage or patriotism of your father, my child?" suggested Madam Lebrenn. "Is it in the power of anybody in the world to stain that which is pure? to disgrace what is great? toturn an honest man into a felon? Do you imagine your father is honored less by his unjust sentence and the mark of the chain that he is now made to drag than by the wounds that he received in 1830? Will he not, when the hour of justice shall have sounded, step out of prison even more beloved, even more venerated than ever before? Oh, my children! We may weep over your father's absence, but let us never forget that every day of his martyrdom exalts and does him honor!"

"You are right, mother," replied Sacrovir, sighing heavily. "Thoughts of hatred and vengeance injure the heart."

"Oh!" exclaimed Velleda sadly. "Poor father! He looked forward to to-morrow's date with so much impatience!"

"To to-morrow?" George asked his wife. "Why so?"

"To-morrow is my son's birthday," explained Madam Lebrenn. "To-morrow, September 11, he will be twenty-one years of age. For several reasons that anniversary was to be a family holiday to us."

Hardly had Madam Lebrenn uttered these words when the street door bell was heard to ring.

"Who can it be, so late? It is nearly midnight," observed Madam Lebrenn. "Go and see who it is, Jeanike."

"I shall go, madam!" cried Gildas heroically, rising from his seat. "There may be some danger."

"I do not think so," replied Madam Lebrenn; "but you may go."

A few minutes later Gildas returned holding in his hand a letter that he delivered to Madam Lebrenn, saying:

"Madam, a messenger brought this—there is no answer."

Hardly had the merchant's wife cast her eyes upon the envelope when she cried:

"Children—a letter from your father!"

George, Sacrovir and Velleda rose together and drew near their mother.

"Singular," she pondered aloud and not without some signs of uneasiness as she examined the envelope which she was unsealing. "This letter must come from Rochefort, like all the others, and yet it is not stamped."

"Perhaps," observed George, "Monsieur Lebrenn commissioned someone who was leaving Rochefort to bring it to you."

"And that must have been the cause of the delay," added Sacrovir. "That is the explanation."

Feeling not a little alarmed at the unusual occurrence, Madam Lebrenn hastened to open the letter, which she proceeded to read aloud to her children:

"Dearly beloved friend, embrace our children in the name of a bit of good news, that will surprise you as much as it will make you happy—I have hopes of seeing you soon—"

When the merchant's wife uttered these words it became impossible for her to continue reading. Her children gathered around her and threw their arms about her neck with shouts of joy, too many and loud to reproduce, while George and Jeanike, standing at a respectful distance, shared the general family glee.

"Dear children, be sensible—do not let us rejoice too soon," cautioned Madam Lebrenn. "Your father only expresses a hope to us. God knows how often our hopes of an amnesty have been dashed!"

"Oh, mother! Mother! Quick! Read on! finish the letter!" exclaimed the children in all keys of impatience. "We shall soon see whether the hope is well founded."

Madam Lebrenn proceeded to read her husband's letter:

"I have hopes of seeing you soon again—sooner perhaps than you may imagine—"

"Do you see, mother, do you see!" cried the children, trembling with joy and clasping their hands as if in prayer.

"Good God! Good God! Is it possible! We are to see him soon again!" exclaimed Madam Lebrenn, wiping from her eyes the tears that darkened them, and she proceeded reading:

"When I say Ihope, my dearly beloved friend, I mean more than a mere hope; it is in fact a certainty. I should, perhaps, have begun my letter by giving you this assurance; but, however well aware I am of your self-possession, I feared lest too sudden a surprise might hurt you and our children. By this time, I consider, your minds are quite familiarized with the idea of seeing me soon, very soon, not so? Accordingly, I now feel free to promise you—"

"Why, mother," broke in George interrupting the reading of the letter, "Monsieur Lebrenn must be in Paris!"

"In Paris!" the family cried in chorus.

"The letter bears no stamp," proceeded George excitedly. "Monsieur Lebrenn has arrived—and he sent the letter ahead with a messenger."

"There can be no doubt! George is right," put in Madam Lebrenn.

And she read rapidly the rest of the missive:

"Accordingly, I now feel free to promise you that we shall all celebrate together our son's anniversary. That day begins to-night after twelve o'clock; at that hour, or, perhaps, even sooner, I shall be with you. Just so soon as the messenger who takes my letter to you, leaves the house, I shall run upstairs and wait—yes, I shall wait behind the door, there, near you."

No sooner were these last words read than Madam Lebrenn and her children precipitated themselves upon the door.

It opened.

Indeed, Monsieur Lebrenn was there.

Futile to describe the transports of joy of this family when once again they had their adored father in their midst!

The family of Marik Lebrenn were assembled in their little parlor on the day after the merchant's arrival. It was the birthday of his son, who on that day completed his twenty-first year.

"My son," Lebrenn said to Sacrovir, "to-day you are twenty-one years of age. The time has come to introduce you to the chamber with the closed window that has so often excited your curiosity. You are about to become acquainted with its contents. I wish first to explain to you the reason for and the cause of this mystery. The moment you are initiated, my son, I know your curiosity will turn to pious respect. Accident has so willed it that the day of your initiation into this family mystery should be providentially chosen. Since my arrival yesterday, we have given ourselves over to tokens of love, and have had little time to consider public matters. Nevertheless, a few words that escaped you—as well as you, my dear George," added the merchant addressing his daughter's husband, "cause me to apprehend that you feel discouraged—that you may even despair."

"It is but too true, father," answered Sacrovir.

"When one witnesses the things that are happening every day," added George, "one may well feel alarmed for the future of the Republic, and of mankind."

"Well, tell me, children," asked Lebrenn with his usual smile, "what is happening that is so very terrible? Tell me all about it."

"Everywhere at this hour the people's liberty is being kicked and cuffed, and even strangled by the henchmen of absolute Kings. Italy, Prussia, Germany, Hungary, are all again forced under the bloody yoke that, electrified by our example in 1848, they that year broke, relying upon our support as their brothers! To the northeast the despot of the Cossacks planted one foot upon Poland, another upon Hungary, smothered both countries in their own blood, and now threatens the independence of Europe with his knout, and is even ready to hurl upon us his savage hordes!"

"Similar hordes, my children, our wooden-shoed fathers rolled in the dust in the days of the Convention—we shall do as much. As to the Kings, they massacre, they threaten, they foam at the mouth with rage—and, above all, with terror! Already they see myriads of avengers arise out of the blood of the martyrs whom they assassinated. These crown-carriers have the vertigo. And there is good reason therefor. If a European war breaks out, immediately the Revolution will raise its head in their own camp and devour them; if peace prevails, the pacific tideof civilization will rise higher and higher, and engulf their thrones. Proceed, children."

"But at home!" cried George. "At home!"

"Well, my friend, what is happening at home?"

"Alas, father! Mistrust, fear, misery sowed everywhere by the hereditary enemies of the people and the bourgeoisie. Credit is destroyed. Turn around, the population, misled, betrayed and deceived, mutinies against the Republic."

"Poor dear blind boys!" replied Lebrenn with his placid and sarcastic smile. "Does not the prodigious industrial movement that is going on among the working class and the bourgeoisie strike your eyes? Only consider the innumerable workingmen's associations that are founded on all sides; consider the admirable attempts made at establishing banks of exchange, commercial bureaus, land credits, co-operative associations, etc. Of these attempts, some are already crowned with success, others are still doubtful, but they are all undertaken with intelligence, boldness, probity, perseverance and faith in the democratic future of society. Do not they prove that the people and the bourgeoisie, no longer leaning upon government for support, seek their strength and resources in themselves, with the end in view of freeing themselves from capitalist and usurious exploitation? Believe me, my children, when the mass of a people like ours goes about seeking the solution of the problem as to the source of their true liberty, of their labor, of their wellbeing and the wellbeing of theirfamilies, the problem can not remain unsolved, and, with Socialism giving its help, the problem will be solved."

"But where are our forces, father? Our party is shattered! The republicans are hounded down, calumniated, imprisoned, proscribed!"

"And what is the conclusion you draw from your discouragement, my boys?"

"Alas," answered Sacrovir sadly, "what we fear is the ruin of the Republic and the return of the days of old; retrogression instead of progress; the desolate conviction that, instead of steadily marching forward, mankind is fatedly condemned to turn in a circle, unable ever to step out of that iron grip. If the Republic goes down we run the risk of retrogressing, who knows how far back, perchance back to the point from which our fathers started in 1789!"

"That, indeed, is exactly what the royalists say and hope, my children. That the royalists should be blind enough to incur that error in logic is easily understood. Nothing blinds so completely as passion, interests, or caste prejudices. But that we, my children, that we should shut our eyes to the obvious evidences of progress, evidences more glaring than the sun, and plunge ourselves in the dismal vapors of doubt;—that we, my children, should do the sanctity of our cause the injustice of questioning its power and its ultimate, supreme triumph, when on all sides it manifests—"

"But, father—"

"As I was saying, when it manifests its power on allsides! I repeat it—under such circumstances to allow oneself to be disheartened and discouraged, that would be to endanger our cause. But humanity pursues its steady march onward, despite the incredulity, the blindness, the weakness, and also the treasons and the crimes of man!"

"But, father—does humanity, indeed, march steadily on the path of progress?"

"Steadily, my sons."

"But yet, centuries ago, our forefathers the Gauls lived free and happy! Nevertheless, were they not forced backward on the path of progress? They were despoiled and enslaved by the Roman conquest, and later by the Frankish Kings."

"I did not say, my friends, that our forefathers did not suffer; what I said was that mankind marched onward. The latest descendants of an old world that was crumbling down on all sides to make room for the Christian world—an immense progress!—our fathers were bruised and mutilated under the falling ruins of ancient society. Nevertheless a deep-reaching and far-spreading social transformation was taking place. Mankind marches evermore—slowly, at times—never, however, does it take a step backward."

"Father, I believe you—yet—"

"Despite yourself, still you doubt, Sacrovir? I can understand it. Fortunately, thelessons, theproofs, thedata, thefacts, thenames, that you are about to be made acquainted with in the mysterious chamber, will go further to convince you than any words of mine. When you willsee, my friends, that in the gloomiest days of our history—such days as the Kings, the seigneurs and the clergy have almost always afflicted man with; when you will see that we, the conquered, started with slavery and arrived step by step to popular sovereignty; you will then ask yourselves whether, at this hour, when we find ourselves invested with that so painfully earned sovereignty, it would not be criminal on our part to mistrust the future. To mistrust it! Great God! Oh! Our fathers, despite all their martyrdom never did mistrust the future! There was hardly a century when they failed to take a step towards deliverance! Alas, almost always that step was marked with blood! If our masters, the conquerors, showed themselves implacable, there hardly was a century when, as you will see, there were not frightful reprisals levied upon them to satisfy divine justice. Yes, you will see, there hardly was a century when the woolen cap did not rise against the casque of gold, when the peasant's scythe did not strike fire with the lance of the knight, when the horny hand of the vassal did not smite the delicately pampered hand of some episcopal petty tyrant! You will see it, my children—hardly a century when the infamous debauches and acts of rapine and ferocity indulged in by the Kings and most of the seigneurs and upper clergy failed to rouse the people, or when they failed to protest, arms in hand, against the tyranny of the throne, the nobility and the Popes! You will see it—hardly a century, when the famishing masses, rising as inexorable as hunger, failed to throw their lordlings into terror—hardly a century without itsBelshazzar's feast, buried along with its golden drinking cups, its flowers, its songs and its displayful magnificence, under the avenging wave of some popular torrent. Undoubtedly, alas! the terrible, though legitimate, reprisals of the oppressed were succeeded by ferocious acts of revenge. Nevertheless, formidable examples had been made. At each recurring epoch the Revolution wrung from the hereditary oppressors of our fathers some lasting concession, registered in the law and necessarily observed."

"I believe you," said Sacrovir. "Judging the past by the present, in 1789 the Revolution conquered our freedom; in 1830 the Revolution returned to us a part of our rights; finally, last year, in 1848, the Revolution proclaimed the sovereignty of the people and universal suffrage, which is calculated to put an end to bloody fratricidal conflicts."

"And so it ever has been, my boy. You will see it—there is not a single social, political, civil or religious reform that our fathers were not forced to conquer from century to century at the price of their blood. Alas! This is a cruel fact—it is deplorable. There was no choice but to resort to arms so long as the only answer made by the stiff-necked and inexorable enjoyers of privilege to the tears, the sorrows, the prayers of the oppressed was—No! No! No! Then frightful outbursts of rage flared up—then torrents of blood flowed on both sides. It was by dint of unterrified valor, persistent efforts, battles and martyrdom that our fathers first broke the old shackles of slavery in which the Franks kept them since the conquest.Thence they arrived at serfdom, a somewhat less horrible condition. Next, from serfs, they became vassals, thereupon subject to mortmain—each of these a step upwards. And evermore thus, from step to step, cutting themselves by dint of abnegation a path across the centuries and all obstacles, they finally came so far as to conquer the sovereignty of the people. And you despair of the future when now, thanks to universal suffrage, the disinherited are able to impose their sovereign will upon the privileged minority! What, you despair, now that power is revokable by the voice of our representatives, whom we select as the supreme judges of the executive power! What, you despair because we have had eighteen months of constant struggle and of occasional suffering! Oh, it was not for so short a period as eighteen months that our forefathers struggled and suffered; it was for the long-drawn period of more than eighteen centuries! If every generation had its martyrs, it also registered its conquests! It is of those martyrs and those conquests that you are about to see the pious relics, the glorious trophies! Come, my children."

With this solemn invocation Marik Lebrenn proceeded, followed by his family, to the room with the closed windows, which the son, the daughter and the son-in-law of the merchant now entered for the first time.

The mysterious chamber into which Marik Lebrenn now for the first time introduced his son, his daughter and George Duchene, presented, as far as exterior appearance went, nothing extraordinary, except that it was kept always lighted by a pendant lamp of antique workmanship, after the fashion of certain consecrated sanctuaries. And was not that spot the sanctuary of pious reminiscences, of the traditions, often heroic, of that plebeian family? Under the lamp the merchant's children saw a large cloth-covered table, on which stood a casket of bronze. Around the casket and musty with centuries, lay a number of articles, some of which dated back to the very furthest antiquity, and the most recent of which were the galley-slave's ring, which the merchant had brought with him from Rochefort, and the casque of the Count of Plouernel.

"My children," said Lebrenn in an impressive voice, indicating the historic curios gathered upon the table, "behold the relics of our family. Around each of these articles clusters some memory, some name, some deed, some date of interest to us. The same as when our descendants will have the narrative of my experience, written by me, thecasque of Monsieur Plouernel and the galley-slave's ring that I brought with me from prison will possess their own historic significance. It is in this manner that almost every generation, of the many of whom we are lineal descendants, has for now nearly two thousand years furnished its contribution and tribute to this collection."

"During so many centuries, father!" said Sacrovir with profound astonishment, and looking at his sister and brother-in-law.

"Yon will later learn, my children, how these relics came down to us. They do not fill much space, as you may notice. With the exception of Monsieur Plouernel's casque and the sword of honor bestowed upon my father at the close of last century, all these articles can be locked up, as they have often been, in that bronze casket—the tabernacle of our family archives, that sometimes lay concealed in some sequestered place, and was often left there for safety during long years, until better days dawned upon its then possessor."

Lebrenn then took up from the table the first of these fragments of the past, which lay ranged in chronological order. It was a piece of gold jewelry, blackened with age, and shaped like a sickle. A movable ring, attached to the handle, indicated that the jewel was meant to be worn from a chain or suspended from a belt.

"This little gold sickle, my children," Lebrenn proceeded to explain, "is a druid emblem. It is the oldest souvenir we possess of our family. It dates back to the year 57 before Jesus Christ, that is to say, nineteen hundred years ago."

"And did any of our forefathers wear that jewel, father?" asked Velleda.

"Yes, my child," answered Lebrenn with deep emotion. "She who wore it was young as you—and gifted with a most angelic heart and proudest courage withal! But why anticipate the history of the relic? You will read that narrative of our family in this manuscript," added Lebrenn, pointing to a booklet which lay beside the gold sickle. The booklet, like all the older ones of those that were exhibited upon the table, consisted of a large number of oblong strips of tanned skin,[11]which, once sewed together by the ends so as to present the appearance of a long and narrow band, were later, for the sake of greater convenience, ripped apart and fastened together in the shape of a small tome covered with black shagreen, on the face of which, in letters of silver, was the inscription:

YEAR57 B. C.

"But father," said Sacrovir, "I see upon the table a booklet, very much like this one, lying beside each of the articles that you have referred to."

"Because, my children, each of these relics, coming from some one of the members of our family, is accompanied by a manuscript, written by himself, and relating his own life, often that of his relatives also."

"Why! Father!" exclaimed Sacrovir more and more amazed. "These manuscripts—"

"Have all been written by some ancestor of ours. Does that astonish you, my children? It is hard, I presume, for you to understand how an obscure family can possess its own chronicles, as if it were of some ancient royal lineage! Besides, you are naturally wondering how these chronicles could follow one another without interruption, from century to century, for nearly two thousand years, down to our own days."

"Indeed, father," said the young man, "that does seem most extraordinary to me."

"You think that verges on the improbable, do you not?" asked the merchant.

"No, father," Velleda hastened to explain, "seeing you say it is so. But it certainly justifies us in wondering."

"I should first of all inform you, my children, that the custom of transmitting family traditions from generation to generation, be it orally or in writing, has ever been one of the most characteristic with our forefathers, the Gauls, and was observed with peculiar religiousness by the Gauls of Brittany, by them more than by any others. Every family, however obscure it might be, had its own traditions, while in the other lands of Europe the habit was observed but rarely even among Princes and Kings. In order to convince you of this," added the merchant, taking from the table a small old book that seemed to date from the earliest days of the printing press, "I shall quote to you a passage translated from one of the most antique works of Brittany, the authority of which is unquestioned in the world of learning."

Marik Lebrenn read as follows:

"'Among the Bretons the most obscure people know their forefathers, and preserve the memory of their full ancestral line, back to the remotest ages, and they state it in this way, for instance:Eres, the son ofTheodrik—son ofEnn—son ofAecle—son ofCadel—son ofRoderikthe Great or the Chief. And so on to the end. Their ancestors are, to them, the object of a positive cult, and the wrongs which they punish most severely are those done to their kin. Their revenge is cruel and sanguinary, and they punish, not the fresh wrongs only, but also the oldest done to their kin, which they keep steadily in mind so long as not revenged.' So you see, my children," observed Lebrenn, laying the book down upon the table, "that explains our family chronicle. Unfortunately, you will learn that some of our ancestors have been but too faithful to this custom of pursuing vengeance from generation to generation. More than once in the course of the ages, the Plouernels—"

"What! Father!" cried George. "Have the ancestors of the Count of Plouernel been, occasionally, the enemies of our family?"

"Yes, children, you will see it. But let us not anticipate events. You will readily understand that, if our fathers were from time immemorial in the habit of handing down a grudge from generation to generation, they necessarily handed down, along with the grudge, the cause therefor, besides the leading events of each generation. Thus it happens that our archives are found written from age to age, down to our own days."

"You are right, father," agreed Sacrovir; "that custom explains what at first seemed extraordinary to us."

"In a minute I shall give you, my children," the merchant proceeded to explain, "some further information regarding the language used in these manuscripts. I must first bespeak your attention for these pious relics, which will make clear to you many things that you will run across in the manuscripts. This gold sickle," added the merchant, replacing the jewel upon the table, "is, as you see, the symbol of manuscript Number 1, dated the year 57 before Jesus Christ. You will learn that that epoch was to our family, free at the time, an epoch of happy prosperity, of virile virtues, of proud principles. It was, alas! the close of a beautiful day. Frightful disasters came upon its heels—slavery, torture and death." After a moment's silence during which the merchant remained steeped in thought, he resumed: "Each of these manuscripts will inform you, century by century, concerning the life of our ancestors."

For several minutes the eyes of the children of Marik Lebrenn wandered over the mementoes of the past lying on the table. Their eyes rested occasionally with greedy curiosity upon one object or another. They contemplated them in silence, and no less moved than their father.

Attached to the little gold sickle was, as Marik Lebrenn had stated, a manuscript bearing the date of the year 57 before Jesus Christ.

To manuscript Number 2, dated the year 56 before Jesus Christ, was attached a little brass bell, very muchlike the bells which to this day are attached to the necks of cattle in Brittany. The bell, accordingly, was at least nineteen hundred years old.

To manuscript Number 3, bearing the date of the year 28 before Jesus Christ, was attached a fragment of an iron collar, or carcan, corroded with rust, and on which the outlines of certain Roman letters could be deciphered, cut into the iron:

SERVUSSUM—(I am the slave).

As a matter of course the name of the slave's owner was on the missing fragment. The carcan must have been at least eighteen hundred and seventy-seven years old.

To manuscript Number 4, which was dated the year 32 of our era, was attached a little silver cross from which hung a tiny little chain of the same metal. Both seemed to have been blackened by fire. The little cross was eighteen hundred and seventeen years old.

To manuscript Number 5, dated the year 296 of our era, was attached a massive copper ornament that once formed part of the top of a casque and represented a lark with wings partly distended. This fragment of a casque was fifteen hundred and fifty-three years old.

To manuscript Number 6, dated the year 550 of our era, was attached the hilt of an iron dagger, black with the mould of ages. On one of its sides could be seen the word:

GHILDE

on the other the following two words in the Celtic andGallic tongues respectively—very much resembling the Breton of our own days:

AMINTIAICH(Friendship)COMMUNITEZ(Community)

The poniard's hilt was every bit of thirteen hundred years old.

To manuscript Number 7, dated the year 615 of our era, a rusty branding needle was attached. This article was fully twelve hundred and thirty-four years old.

To manuscript Number 8, dated the year 737 of our era, an abbatial crosier was attached. It was of chiseled silver and bore evidence of once having been gilded over. The nameMerofledecould be deciphered amid the exquisitely wrought ornamentation of the relic. The crosier was eleven hundred and twelve years old.

To manuscript Number 9, dated the year 811, two pieces of Carlovingian money were attached. Their reverse bore the effigy of Charlemagne, still recognizable. One of the coins was of copper, the other of silver. They were held together by an iron wire. The two coins were ten hundred and thirty-eight years old.

To manuscript Number 10, dated the year 912, was attached a barbed iron arrow head. The arrow-head was nine hundred and thirty-seven years old.

To manuscript Number 11, dated the year 999, was attached a fragment of an infant's skull. The child, judging by the size and structure of the fragment, must have been between eight and ten years of age. The externalwall of the fragment bore, graven in the Gallic tongue, the words:

FIN-AL-BRED(The End of the World).

The skull was eight hundred and fifty years old.

To manuscript Number 12, dated the year 1096, was attached a ribbed white shell, of the sort that is seen on the pictures of pilgrims' mantles. The frail shell was seven hundred and fifty-three years old.

To manuscript Number 13, dated the year: 1208, was attached a pair of iron pincers, an instrument of torture, the tongues of which were serrated so that the teeth fitted exactly into one another. This instrument of torture was six hundred and forty-one years old.

To manuscript Number 14, dated the year 1358, was attached a little iron trevet of about twenty centimeters in diameter, that looked as if it, had been almost fretted out of shape by fire. The trevet was four hundred and ninety-nine years old.

To manuscript Number 15, bearing the date of the year 1413, was attached an executioner's knife with a horn handle, the blade of which was eaten up with rust and partly broken. The knife was four hundred and thirty-six years old.

To manuscript Number 16, bearing the date of the year 1535, was attached a little pocket Bible, belonging to the first years of the printing press. The cover of the book was almost wholly burnt up, likewise the corners of the pages, as if the Bible had been exposed to fire. Several pages alsobore stains that must have been of blood. The Bible was three hundred and fourteen years old.

To manuscript Number 17, dated the year 1673, was attached the iron head of a heavy blacksmith's hammer, on which, engraved in the Breton tongue, could be read the words:

EZ-LIBR(To be free).

The hammer was one hundred and seventy-six years old.

To manuscript Number 18, dated the year 1794, was attached a sword of honor, with hilt of gilded copper bearing, the following inscription engraved on the blade:

JOHNLEBRENN HAS DESERVED WELL OF THE FATHERLAND.

Finally, unaccompanied by any manuscript, and only bearing the dates of 1848 and 1849, came the last two articles that made up the collection:

The dragoon's casque which was presented in February of 1848 to Marik Lebrenn by the Count of Plouernel, and the iron ring that the merchant had worn in the galleys of Rochefort that very year of 1849.

It can easily be imagined with what pious respect and burning curiosity these fragments of the past were examined by the merchant's family. He interrupted the pensive silence that his children preserved during the examination, and resumed:

"Accordingly, as you see, my children, these manuscripts relate the history of our plebeian family for the last two thousand years. Accordingly, also, this history could be called the history of the people, of their faults, their excesses, occasionally even of their crimes Slavery, ignoranceand misery often deprave man in degrading him. But thanks be to God, in our family, the bad acts are rare, while, on the other hand, numerous have been the patriotic and heroic deeds of our Gallic forefathers and mothers during their long struggle against the Roman and then the Frankish conquest. Yes, the men and the women—for, often will you see in the pages of these narratives that the women, like worthy daughters of Gaul, vie with the men in abnegation and intrepidity. Many a one of these touching and heroic figures will remain cherished and glorified in your memory as the saints of our domestic legend. Now, one word concerning the language used in these manuscripts. As you know, my children, your mother and I have ever kept at your side, since your earliest years, a female servant from our own country, in order that you might learn to speak the Breton dialect at the same time that you learned to speak French; furthermore, your mother and I ever kept you familiar with that dialect by using it frequently in conversation with you."

"Yes, father."

"Well, my son," said Marik Lebrenn to Sacrovir, "in teaching you the Breton tongue I had above all in mind—obedient, moreover, to a tradition in our family, according to which it never forgot its mother tongue—to enable you to read these manuscripts."

"Are they, then, written in the Breton tongue, father?" asked Velleda.

"Yes, my children. The Breton tongue is none other than the Celtic or Gallic that was once spoken all overGaul before the Roman and Frankish conquests. With the exception of a few changes that have taken place in the course of the centuries, it has preserved its purity in our Brittany, down to our own days. Of all the provinces of Gaul, Brittany was the last to submit to the Frankish Kings who issued from the conquest. Yes, let us never forget the proud and heroic motto of our fathers, conquered and despoiled though they were by the invader:We still preserve our name, our tongue, our faith.Now, then, my children, after two thousand years of struggles and strifes, our family has preserved its name, its tongue and its faith. We call ourselvesLebrenn, we speak Gallic, and I have raised you in the faith of our fathers, in the faith of the immortality of the soul and of the continuity of existence which enables us to look upon death as a change of habitation, nothing more—a sublime faith the morality of which, taught by the druids, was summed up in precepts like these:Adore God; do no harm; exercise charity; he is pure and holy who performs celestial works and pure.Fortunately, my children, we are not the only ones who preserved the sublime dogma of the continuity of life. Armand Barbès, one of the bravest militants of the democracy, when taken prisoner and subsequently condemned to death under the reign of Louis Philippe, awaited the hour of his execution with religious serenity of soul. The serenity which he preserved he drew from his faith in the perpetuity of life, a fundamental principle in our creed. I can do no better, my friends, than to read to you a page from the writings of Armand Barbès, the page which hededicated to the memory of Godefroid Cavaignac, the publicist of the democracy, entitled: 'Two days of a death sentence.'"

Lebrenn read:

"It was the 12th of June, 1839. After four days' deliberation the Court of Peers notified me of its sentence. According to the usage in such cases, it was the registrar who brought me the sentence, and the honorable Cauchy thought it his duty to add to his message a little puff for the Roman Catholic and Apostolic religion. I answered him that I had my own religion and believed in God, but that that was no reason why I should be in need of the consolations of a priest, whosoever he might be. I requested him to be kind enough to inform his masters that I was ready to die, and that I only hoped that when their last hour approached their soul might be as tranquil as mine.

"Armand Barbès then proceeds to tell how, instinctively inspired, and led by the approach of his last hour to a plane of lofty thought, he recalled with thrilling gratitude the source from which he drew his supreme tranquility in the face of death. He then says further:

"One day I read in theNew Encyclopediathe superb article onHeavenby John Raynaud. Passing by the irrefutable arguments with which he incidentally demolishes the heaven and hell of the Catholics, his leading thought, as taught by the druid faith, of deriving from the law of progress the infinite series of our lives, as they continuously progress in worlds that gravitate ever nearer and nearer to God, seemed to me to satisfy at once all our multiple aspirations. Do not the moral sense, the imagination, do not our desires, does not everything find there its place? Nevertheless, carried away, while I read the article, by the pre-occupations of an active republican, I gave at the time littlethought to details; all I did with these was to deposit them, so to speak, undigested in my heart. But later, when picked up wounded on the street I inhabited a prison cell with the scaffold in perspective, I drew them out of the place where I held them in reserve as a last store of wealth the value of which the time had come for me to appreciate in full—and these thoughts rose naturally to my mind during my watches, already a victim bound for the executioner, during these solitary hours when I kept watch in the solemn night of death."I beg pardon of John Raynaud, the elegant encyclopedist, for my having turned into a vile plummet, in order to meet the exigency of the moment, the pure gold of his philosophy. Thus, after confirming with some preliminary reasoning my belief in the immortality of the soul, meseems a sublime Jacob's ladder unrolled before my eyes, with its foot resting on the earth to climb heavenward, eternally, from star to star, from sphere to sphere! The cart, this planet upon which I had spent thirty years, looked to me to be one of the innumerable specks where man makes his first landing in life—whence he begins to climb upwards before God, and, when the phenomenon which we call death is accomplished, man, drawn by the attraction of progress, is forthwith re-born in a superior star with a new expansion of his being.

"I beg pardon of John Raynaud, the elegant encyclopedist, for my having turned into a vile plummet, in order to meet the exigency of the moment, the pure gold of his philosophy. Thus, after confirming with some preliminary reasoning my belief in the immortality of the soul, meseems a sublime Jacob's ladder unrolled before my eyes, with its foot resting on the earth to climb heavenward, eternally, from star to star, from sphere to sphere! The cart, this planet upon which I had spent thirty years, looked to me to be one of the innumerable specks where man makes his first landing in life—whence he begins to climb upwards before God, and, when the phenomenon which we call death is accomplished, man, drawn by the attraction of progress, is forthwith re-born in a superior star with a new expansion of his being.

"So you see, my children, what fortitude of soul the dogma of the perpetuity of life is able to impart. Let us, then, follow the example of our forefathers; let us follow in the footsteps of their belief; and let us, like them,preserve our name, our tongue and our faith."

"We shall not fail in that pledge, father," answered Velleda.

"We shall show neither less courage nor less persistence than our ancestors," added Sacrovir. "Oh, how I shall be thrilled with ecstasy when I read those venerated lineswhich they have traced! But is the chirography of the Celtic or Gallic language the same exactly as the Breton, which we are accustomed to read, father?"

"No, my boy. Since a number of centuries back, the Gallic chirography, which originally was the same as the Greek, began to be little by little modified in the course of time, and finally fell into disuse. But my grandfather, a working compositor, learned and well lettered, transcribed into modern Breton all the manuscripts that were in Gallic. Thanks to his work, you will be able to read those manuscripts as fluently as you read the legends that our good Gildas loves so well, and which, composed eight or nine hundred years ago, are still current in our villages of Brittany, printed on brown paper."

"Father!" exclaimed Sacrovir. "One more question. Did our family always inhabit our beloved Brittany during all these centuries?"

"No—not always, as you will see in these narratives. The conquest, the wars, the rude vicissitudes to which a family like ours was exposed in those evil days, often compelled our forefathers to leave their natal soil,—sometimes because they were carried away slaves or prisoners into other provinces; sometimes in order to escape death; other times, again, in order to gain their bread; still other times in obedience to foreign laws; and, finally, occasionally driven thereto by the whims of fate. Nevertheless, few are our forefathers who did not make a certain pious pilgrimage, as I have made myself, and as you, in turn will make onthe first of January following the year of your majority, that is next January 1."

"And why on that particular day, father?"

"Because the first day of each new year has ever been a solemn day with the Gauls."

"And in what does the pilgrimage consist?"

"You will proceed to the druid stones of Karnak, near Auray."

"Indeed, I have heard it said, father, that that assemblage of gigantic granite blocks, found down to to-day, ranked in a mysterious fashion, dates back to the remotest antiquity."

"Already two thousand years and more ago, my boy, it was not known at what epoch—an epoch that is lost in the night of the past—the stones of Karnak were raised and put in place."

"Oh! father, one is seized as with a vertigo in thinking of the age that those monumental stones must have."

"Only God knows it, my friends! If we are to judge of their future by their past, myriads of generations will yet succeed one another at the feet of those gigantic monuments, which seem to defy the tooth of time, and upon which the eyes of our fathers have so often rested from century to century in pious meditation."

"And why did they make the pilgrimage, father?"

"Because the cradle of our family, the fields and the homesteads of the first of our ancestors of whom these manuscripts make mention, were situated near the stones of Karnak. As you will see, that ancestor was namedJoel, en Brenn an Lignez an Karnak, which, as you know, meansJoel, the chief of the tribe of Karnak. He was the chief or patriarch, chosen by his tribe, or by his clan, as the Scotch call it."[12]

"Accordingly," interjected George Duchene, "your name, father, the name ofBrenn, means chief?"

"Yes, my friend, that honorable appellation, attached to the name of each individual, to his baptismal name, as the saying is since the advent of Christianity, has in the course of time been transformed into a family name. The custom of family names does not begin to be generally observed among plebeian families until towards the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century. In earlier days, the son of the first of our ancestors, for instance, whom I mentioned to you, was calledGuilhern, mab eus an Brenn—Guilhern, the son of the chief—thenKirio, grandson of the chief, and so on. In the course of time the words grandson and great-grandson were suppressed, and the only name added to the word Brenn, which was corrupted into Lebrenn, was the baptismal one. Accordingly, almost all the names taken from a trade—asCarpenter,Smith,Baker,Weaver,Miller, etc., etc.—have their origin in some manual occupation, the designation of which has been converted in the course of time into a family appellation. These explanations may seem trivial; they nevertheless attest a grave and painful fact—the absence of a real family name with our brothersof the masses of the people. Alas! So long as they were slaves or serfs, could people who did not belong to themselves have a patronymic? Their masters dubbed them with bizarre and grotesque nicknames, as one gives to a horse or a dog such names as suit his whim. When the slave was sold to a new master he was dressed up in a new name. But, as you will see, in the measure that, thanks to their energetic and unflagging struggle, the oppressed arrived at a less servile state, the consciousness of their dignity as human beings developed apace. When, finally, they could have a name of their own and transmit the same to their children, however obscure, yet always honorable, it was a sign that they were slaves no longer, nor yet serfs, although still steeped in wretchedness. The conquest of a proper, or family name, has been, by reason of the duties it imposes and the rights that it gives, one of the longest steps taken by our ancestors in the direction of their complete emancipation. In the manuscripts that we are about to read you will encounter an admirable sentiment of the Gallic nationality and of its religious faith—a sentiment all the more irrepressible, all the more exaggerated, perhaps, by reason of the Roman and Frankish conquests being felt as galling yokes by those heroic men and women, who were so proud of their race and who carried their contempt for death to the point of superhuman grandeur. Let us admire them, let us emulate them in their ardent love for their country, in their implacable hatred of oppression, in their belief in the progressive continuity of life which delivers us from thedisease of death. But, whilepiously glorifying the past, let us continue, in step with the movement of mankind, to march towards the future. Let us apt forget that a New World began with Christianity. Unquestionably its divine spirit of fraternity, equality and freedom has been outrageously belied, trampled in the dirt, and persecuted since the first centuries of its era by most of the Catholic bishops, who were themselves holders of slaves, and were gorged with wealth that they wheedled from the conquering Franks, in return for the absolution of their abominable crimes which the high clergy sold to them. It could be no otherwise than that our fathers, seeing the evangelical word smothered and impotent to deliver them, took matters into their own hands, rose in rebellion and in arms against the tyranny of the conquerors, and almost always, as you will find proof in these manuscripts, where sermons only suffered shipwreck, revolt secured some lasting concession. It happened obedient to the time-honored behest—Help yourself, and heaven will help you. Nevertheless, despite the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, the breath of Christianity has passed over the world, and warms it more and more with that sweet and tender warmth which, notwithstanding all its grandeur, the druidic faith of our ancestors was lacking in. Thus rejuvenated and completed, our old druid belief is bound to receive a fresh impetus. It no doubt was a trying experience for us to undergo, the loss of even the name of our nationality, and to see the name ofFrancesubstituted for that of our old and illustrious Gaul by a horde of ferocious conquerors.

"No doubt theGallic Republicwould sound no less pleasant to our ears than theFrench Republic. But our first and immortal Republic has sufficiently cleansed the French name of whatever monarchic odor clung to it, by carrying its colors triumphantly over all the lands of Europe. Moreover, my friends," added the merchant with his habitual smile, "the same thing happens to that old and brave Gaul as happened to her own heroic women who rendered themselves illustrious under their husband's name—although, to be sure, the marriage of Gaul with the Frank came about in a singularly forced manner."

"I understand that, father," observed Velleda, also smiling. "The same as many women sign their own family name beside the one they hold from their husband, all the admirable deeds performed by our heroine under a name that was not her own should be signed—FRANCE, born GAUL."

"An excellent comparison," remarked Madam Lebrenn. "Our name might change, our race has remained our race."

"And now," resumed Marik Lebrenn with deep emotion, "now that you are initiated into the family tradition which founded our plebeian archives, do you, my children take the solemn pledge to perpetuate them, and to cause your children to follow your example? Do you, my son, and you, my daughter, in default of him, pledge yourselves to register in all sincerity the deeds and events of your own lives, be they just or unjust, praiseworthy or blamable, tothe end that the day when you depart from this existence to another, the narrative of your own life may increase our family chronicles, and that the inexorable sense of justice of our descendants may praise or condemn our memory, according as we shall have deserved?"

"Yes, father—we swear!"

"Well, then, Sacrovir, this day on which you have completed your twenty-first year, you are free, agreeable to our traditions, to read these manuscripts. We shall begin the reading this very evening, in a family circle, and continue it from day to day. In order that George may participate, we shall translate into French, as we read."

Marik Lebrenn, his wife and George being gathered together that evening, Sacrovir Lebrenn began the readings, starting with the first manuscript, entitled: "The Gold Sickle."

I request my reader to leap over the space of time that elapsed since we left the family of Lebrenn assembled in the room, held to be so mysterious by Gildas, and which contained the archives or narratives of the family, which they began to read successively.

It is now Sunday, December 1, 1851. The same personages—Marik Lebrenn, Henory his wife, Sacrovir, his sister Velleda, and her husband—are assembled on the evening of that Sunday in the modest upper parlor connected with the linendraper's shop.

Answering a question put to him by his father, Sacrovir was saying:

"The prophecy came very near being fulfilled in 1848. The thrones shook everywhere—revolutions in Naples, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Rome. Italy was on fire. The German Confederation contemplated declaring itself a republican federation at the diet of Frankfort. Frankfort was in revolt; Hungary up in arms; Poland and Spain shook to their very center; all Europe was in a revolutionary ferment, Russia alone excepted. What, however, could that country's autocrat do against the confederation of all the other peoples, leagued against him in a holy, the holiest of alliances! One more step, and our generation would have hailed the United States of Europe. Alas! Thesublime moment was missed! The plan miscarried. Will it be long before the opportunity returns?"

"What does it matter, my children," replied Lebrenn, "whether we actually witness or not the dawn, if we have the certainty that the sun of that beautiful day is bound eventually to shine over a regenerated world! The very disappointment of 1848 is a positive earnest that the prophecy of our ancestress Victoria the Great will be accomplished. Do you for a moment imagine that the lava is cold which, in 1848, ran boiling over such wide areas of Europe? No! No! Whatever appearances may be, whatever the present depression, revolutionary thought is at this very hour germinating under the soil. It is spreading and gaining in depth through a thousand underground rootlets. Sooner or later, its sudden and last irresistible explosion will be heard. Upon the ruins of the old social system a new social order will be established.

"There can be no doubt whatever, my children, regarding that great and crowning event. Progress is the law of humanity—for society as well as for the individual. Our plebeian narratives furnish the irrefutable proof. Our ancestors, subjected, first by the Roman and then by the Frankish conquest, to a most galling slavery, progressed by little and little towards freedom. Originally slaves and sold and exploited and treated like vile human cattle, they then became serfs, and, from serfs, vassals. Finally they revindicated and conquered their sovereignty, consecrated by the immortal Republic of 1792, and confirmed by that of 1848. When we see such progress traced across thepages of the centuries, how can we entertain any doubts as to what the future has in store?"

"A knowledge of the past," observed George Duchene, "imparts a firm faith in the future."

"How strange the emotions that come over one," remarked Velleda, "when the long procession of the personages of our ancient family files before our mind's eye in the living flesh, I may say, as if they emerged from the dust of the ages!Hena, the virgin of the Isle of Sen;Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak;Sylvest, the Roman slave, and his sisterSyomara; thenGenevieve, who witnessed the execution of Jesus of Nazareth;Schanvoch, the soldier and foster-brother of Victoria the Great; thenRonan the Vagre, the intrepid insurgent against the Frankish conquest;Loysik the hermit laborer, who saw Brunhild die;Amael, Charles Martel's companion in arms, and appointed keeper of the last pitiful scion of the once redoubtable Clovis;Vortigern, the beloved of Thetralde, Charlemagne's daughter;Eidiol, the Parisian skipper, besidesGaëlo the Pirateand ancestor of the Prince of Gerolstein and companion in arms of Rolf, who became Duke of Normandy and son-in-law of the French King Charles the Simple;Yvon the Forester, an eye-witness of the death of Louis the Do-Nothing, the last scion of the Carlovingian dynasty, succeeded by Hugh Capet who enthroned his house with the aid of adultery and murder;Fergan the Quarryman, serf of the seigneur of Plouernel, and who, departing for Palestine, was present at the siege and capture of Jerusalem. His sonColombaik, one of the boldcommuniers of the city of Laon, who battled against their episcopal seigneur in the endeavor to emancipate the communes from the feudal yoke;Karvel the Perfect, done to death with his sweet wifeMoriseduring the Crusade against the Albigensians;Mazurec the Lambkin, the husband of Aveline-Who-Never-Lied, daughter of William Caillet, the immortal chieftain of the Jacques;Jocelyn the Championwho witnessed the martyrdom of Joan Darc, the Maid of Gaul;Christian the Printer, whose daughterHenawas burned alive before Francis I;Antonicq, who battled intrepidly at the siege of La Rochelle by the side ofCornelia Mirant, his brave bride-to-be;Salaun, the mariner, one of the chiefs in the revolt of the vassals of Brittany who endeavored to impose the Peasant Code upon their seigneurs and bishops during the reign of Louis XIV. Finally,John Lebrenn, our own grandfather, whose sisterVictoriawas the victim of the lewdness of Louis XV—that John Lebrenn, who was commissioned as a guard over Louis XVI, but who, alas! did not live to hail the Republic of 1848! When so many members of our race and our blood rise before my mind from the vasty depths of the centuries that have rolled by, a vertigo seizes me as I climb the ladder from Age to Age up to the fountainhead of our family, in the days of the Republic of the Gauls."

Velleda's words were listened to with rapt attention by all the members of her family. Her father was the first to break the silence:

"My children, if indeed our family history is priceless,the reason lies in that that history is the history, not of a family merely, but, above all, of all the proletarians and all the bourgeois of Gallic extraction, of that Gallic race that was conquered and subjugated by the Franks, the dominant race, until 1789, the date of their final emancipation. The struggle of theChildren of Joelacross the ages with theChildren of Neroweg, of whom the Count of Plouernel is a descendant, is a summary of the centuries-old struggle between the vanquishers and the vanquished, the oppressors and the oppressed. By imparting to us a knowledge and the consciousness of what our forefathers have undergone in order to regain their freedom and their rights, this history must render us all the prouder and more jealous of the boon that we have conquered at the cost of so many tears, of such untold privations, and of such torrents of blood. It must inspire us with the desire to defend it unto death."

THE END.

Changes made in the text (note of etext transcriber):I know a fine man=>I knew a fine manGeorge's counteance=>George's countenance

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