ce, then Brittany will be peopled with slaves before a century shall
have rolled away."

"Brother," added Vortigern, "would you yield to threats, instead of
reviving the spirit of Brittany in a sacred war against the foreigner?
That would be to debase ourselves forever! To-day we would pay tribute
to the king of the Franks, in order to avoid a war; to-morrow we would
have to yield to him one-half of our patrimony, in order that he may
allow us to retain the rest; after that we would have to submit to
slavery with all its degradation and wretchedness, in order to be
allowed to preserve our lives. The chain will have been riveted to our
limbs, and our children will have to drag it during all the centuries to
come!"

"Unhappy Brittany!" exclaimed Noblede. "Have we fallen so low as to
begin to measure the length of our chains? Look at these three brave,
wise and tried men, wasting their time in discussing the insolence of a
Frankish king! There is but one word you can answer with--WAR! Oh,
degenerate Gauls! Eight centuries ago, Caesar, the greatest captain of
the world, and at the head of a formidable army, also sent messengers to
summon Brittany to pay him tribute. The Roman messengers were answered
with a beating, and chased with contempt out of the city of Vannes. That
same evening, Hena, our ancestress, offered her blood to Hesus for the
deliverance of Gaul, and the cry of war resounded from one end of the
country to the other! Albinik the sailor, together with his wife Meroe,
performed a journey of more than twenty leagues across the most fertile
regions of Gaul, but then burnt down by a conflagration that the people
themselves had kindled. Caesar saw before him only a waste of
smouldering ruins, and on the day of the battle of Vannes our whole
family--women and young girls, children and old men--fought or died like
heroes! Oh! These ancestors of ours worried their heads little about the
'dangers of battle'! To live free or die--such was their simple faith,
and they sealed it with their blood, and winged their flight to those
unknown worlds where they continue to live!"

Noblede was addressing Morvan, Vortigern and Caswallan in these terms,
when the abbot, who had left his apartment and inquired after Morvan
from the people about the house, approached the oak under which the
Breton family was in council. Although the moon was shining in all her
splendor, the first glimmerings of the dawn, always early in the end of