The Poniard's Hilt Part 20

"Who told you--"

"One of your ancestors was named Joel; he was the brenn of the tribe of Karnak. Hena, the saint sung about in the druid chant, was the daughter of Joel, whose family traces its origin back to the Gallic brenn, whom the Romans called Brennus, and who, nearly eight hundred years ago, made them pay ransom for Rome."

"Who are you that you know the history of my family so accurately?"

"That chant of the slaves in revolt against the Romans--'Flow, flow, thou blood of the captive! Drop, drop, thou dew of gore!'--was sung by one of your ancestors named Sylvest, who was cast to the wild beasts in the circus of Orange. And I imagine that your father taught you another thrilling chant, one sung two hundred and odd years ago, on the occasion of one of the great battles fought on the Rhine against the Franks, and won by Victorin, the son of Victoria, the Mother of the Camps--"

"You are right--often did my father sing that chant to me. It began this wise:

"'This morning we said: How many are there of these barbarous hordes?

How many are there of these Franks?'"

"And it closed this wise," replied the monk:

"'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 pa.s.sed. 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."

"Did the hermit-laborers establish a colony?"

"Several of them gathered in a secluded spot to cultivate the lands that had been laid waste and were abandoned since the conquest. They were plain and good men, faithful to the recollections of old Gaul and to the precepts of the gospels. Those monks lived in celibacy, but took no vows. They remained lay, and had no clerical character. It is only since recent years that most of those monks have begun entering the Church.

But having become priests, they are daily losing the popular esteem that they once enjoyed, and the independence of character that rendered them so redoubtable to the bishops. At the time that I am speaking of, the life of those hermit-laborers was peaceful and industrious. They lived like brothers, obedient to the precepts of Jesus; they cultivated their lands in common; and they jointly and forcibly defended them whenever some band of Franks, on the way from some burg to another, took it into their heads, out of sheer wantonness, to injure the fields or crops of the monks--"

"I must say that I love those hermits, who are at once husbandmen and soldiers, who are faithful to the precepts of Jesus, to the love for old Gaul, and to horror for the Franks. You say that those monks fought well--were they armed?"

"They had arms--and better than arms. See here," said the hermit drawing from under his robe a species of short sword or long poniard with an iron hilt; "observe this weapon carefully. Its strength does not lie in its blade but in the words engraven on the hilt."

"I see," said Ronan, "on one of the sides of the guard, the word _ghilde_, and on the other side two Gallic words--_friendship_--_community_. I suppose these are the device of the hermit-laborers? But what does the word _ghilde_ mean? That is not a Gallic word. It is unknown to me."

"It is a Saxon word."

"Oh! It is a word from the language of the pirates who come down from the seas of the North, skirt the coasts, and often ascend the Loire in order to plunder the bordering lands. They are fearful marauders, but intrepid seamen! Think of their coming over sea from distant sh.o.r.es, in mere canoes, that are so frail and light that, at a pinch, they are carried on their backs. It is said that they have ascended the Loire more than once as far as Tours."

"And it is true. And thus Gaul is to-day the prey of barbarians from within and from without. She is at the mercy of the Franks and the Saxons!"

"But how can that Saxon word _ghilde_, engraven on the iron impart strength to the weapon, as you tell me?"

"I shall explain the secret to you. One of the monk-laborers lived on the border of the Loire before he joined us. Being carried away by the pirates at one of their raids in Touraine, when he was still in his early infancy, he was brought up in their country. During his sojourn among them, he noticed that those men of the North drew immense strength from certain a.s.sociations in which each owed solidarity to all, and all to each--solidarity in fraternity, in a.s.sistance, in goods, in arms and in life. These a.s.sociations are generally believed to have sprung up from Christian fraternity; the fact is that they were in practice in those Northern regions many a century before the birth of Jesus, and they were called _ghildes_. Later the prisoner of the pirates succeeded in making his escape, reentered Gaul, joined us hermit-laborers--"

"Why do you break off?"

"An oath that I have taken forbids me to say more--"

"I shall respect your secret. But the confidence, with which I seem to inspire you, you also inspire in me. My brother, you said to me, was of the number of the hermit-laborers with whom you are a.s.sociated. You must have known him intimately. Only he could have furnished you with the details concerning the family of Joel which he doubtlessly received from his own father. Why do you look at me so fixedly? Your silence disconcerts and moves me--your eyes are filling with tears--"

"Ronan, your brother was born thirty years ago--that is my age. Your brother's name is Loysik--that is my name."

"Loysik! My brother!"

"It is I. Did you not surmise as much?"

"Joy of heavens! You are my brother!"

Long did the hermit and the Vagre remain in close embrace. After the first ebullition of their tender joy, Ronan said to Loysik:

"And whatever became of our father?"

"I know not his fate--but let us trust in the goodness of G.o.d--let us not despair of some day finding him again--"

"And was it your brother's instinct that led you to accompany us?"

"I did not suspect you of being my brother until I noticed the degree to which you were moved by the chant of Hena. When you told me she was one of your ancestresses, I no longer entertained any doubt but that we were either brothers or close relatives. The account of your life proved to me that we were brothers."

"But why, then, did you follow us in Vagrery?"

"Did you not hear my answer to Bishop Cautin: 'It is not the well but the sick who stand in need of the physician?'"

"Would you blame me for being a Vagre, and would you blame our father for having been a Bagauder?"

"No less than you, Ronan, do I hold slavery and conquest in horror, seeing that Gaul, formerly powerful and teeming with happiness, is covered with ruins and brambles since the Frankish invasion.

Proprietors, colonists, husbandmen have all fled before the barbarians who reduce them to slavery, or cause them to die of hunger by reason of the frightful floods of famine that have followed in the wake of the invading army. Driven by despair large numbers of those unhappy people run the Vagrery like yourself. Only slaves are seen here and there cultivating the lands of the Church and of the seigneurs, and the poor wretches bend under the weight of toil; not infrequently die of hunger or of maltreatment. The cities, once so rich, so flourishing by their commerce, are to-day ruined, almost depopulated, but being at least defended by their walls, they offer some measure of security to their inhabitants; and yet, the ceaseless civil wars between the sons of Clovis at times deliver even these places to the torch of the incendiary, to pillage and to ma.s.sacre. During the fitful lulls of these feuds, the inhabitants hardly dare to leave their walls; the roads, infested with armed bands, render communication and traffic impossible.

But too often the horrors of famine have decimated the population of whole cities. Alas! Such is the sad plight of our country."

"Aye, that is what the Frankish conquest has done for Gaul. She can no longer be free--let her disappear from the world burying the conquerors and the conquered alike under her ruins!"

"Brother, is not this Gaul that you lay waste with as much inveterateness as the conquerors themselves, is she not our dearly beloved country, our mother? Is it for us, her children, to join hands with the barbarians in whelming her with sorrows and trials? Like yourself, I wish to labor for the overthrow of barbarism; like yourself I wish to put an end to the craven besottedness of the oppressed; but I wish to destroy barbarism with civilization, ignorance with enlightenment, poverty with labor, slavery with the sense of national worth--a sense, alas! now almost wholly uprooted, and yet once so powerful, in the days of our fathers, when our venerated druids aroused the peoples to arms against the Romans. Holy insurrections!"

"Tracked by the bishops, our last druids have died upon the scaffold!"

"But the druid faith is not dead! No--no! The forms of religions pa.s.s, but their divine principle remains for all time. Revived, stimulated and regenerated by the gentle morality of Jesus, the druid faith is born anew in our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It has preserved its belief in the immortality of the soul of men, in their successive re-incarnation in the starry world, to the end that by fresh trials and sufferings the wicked may become good, and the just still more perfect. Aye, humanity, whether visible or invisible, must rise from sphere to sphere in its eternal effort, in its continuous progress, towards infinite perfection. Such is our faith, the faith of us Christian druids, who practice the evangelical doctrine in all that it contains of tenderness, mercifulness, and the love of freedom--"