"That's all one. It will be enough to entertain me. Besides, I can look at the opposite houses. Our neighbors often sit at their windows. But – hold! It strikes me now – by the way of the houses on the other side of the street, there is a thing I have meant to ask you, and always forgot. Tell me what that sign means which I see before the linendraper's house. What is the meaning of that helmeted warrior throwing his sword into the scales? You who did the carpentering work in the shop, when it was recently renovated, you should know the why and wherefore of its sign."
"I did not know it either until my master detailed me to work in Monsieur Lebrenn's shop."
"All over the quarter people speak of him as a straight-forward man. All the same, what devil of a notion is that of choosing such a looking sign —The Sword of Brennus! If he were an armorer, the thing might pass. True enough, there are scales in the picture, and scales suggest commerce – but why does the warrior with his helmet on and the air of an Artaban throw his sword into the scale?"
"I'll tell you. But really, I feel bashful, at my age, to presume to hold a lecture to you."
"Why bashful? Why that? Instead of going out on Sundays for a walk where people congregate near the fortifications, you read, you learn, you instruct yourself. You may well hold a lecture to your grandfather – there is no harm in that!"
"Well – the warrior with a helmet, that Brennus, was a Gaul, one of our ancestors, the chieftain of the army which, two thousand years and how much more ago I do not know, marched into Italy to attack Rome in order to punish the city for some act of treachery. The city surrendered to the Gauls and was spared in consideration of a ransom in gold. But, not considering the ransom large enough, Brennus threw his sword into the scale that held the weights."
"In order to secure a larger ransom, the shrewd old fellow! He did the opposite of what the fruit-venders do who help the scales in their interest with their thumbs. I understand that part of it. But there are yet two things I do not understand at all. In the first place you said that that warrior, who lived more than two thousand years ago, was one of our ancestors!"
"Yes, that Brennus and the Gauls of his army belonged to the race from which we descend – almost all of us in this country of France."
"One moment – you say they were Gauls?"
"Yes, grandfather."
"Then we are descendants of the Gallic race?"
"Certainly."
"But we are Frenchmen. How do you account for that, my boy?"
"Simply this way – our country, our mother country, was not always called France."
"Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!" exclaimed the old man, taking the pipe out of his mouth. "How is that? France was not always called France?"
"No, grandfather. During ages immemorial our country was called Gaul, and was a republic, as glorious, as powerful, but happier, and twice as large as France during the Empire."
"The devil you say!"
"Unfortunately, about two thousand years ago – "
"Is that all? Two thousand years! How you do fling around the years, my boy!"
"Dissensions broke out in Gaul; the several provinces rose against one another – "
"Ah! That's ever the trouble! That was the very trick of the clergy and the royalists during the Revolution – "
"And so, grandfather, that befell to Gaul, centuries ago, that befell to France in 1814 and 1815."
"A foreign invasion!"
"Exactly. The Romans, once vanquished by Brennus, had in the meantime become powerful. They profited by the divisions among our fathers; and they invaded the land – "
"Exactly as the Cossacks and the Prussians invaded us!"
"Exactly so. But what the Cossack and Prussian Kings, the good friends of the Bourbons, did not dare to do – not that they lacked the wish – the Romans did. Despite a heroic resistance, our ancestors, ever brave as lions, but unfortunately divided, were reduced to slavery, as the Negroes are to-day in some colonies."
"Is such a thing possible!"
"Yes. They wore iron collars, bearing the initials of their masters, when those initials were not branded on their foreheads with a hot iron."
"Our fathers!" cried the old man, joining his hands with pain and indignation. "Our fathers!"
"And when they tried to run away, their masters had their noses and ears cropped, if not their hands and feet."
"Our fathers!"
"Other times their masters would cast them to wild beasts for amusement, or cause them to be put to death under frightful tortures if they refused to cultivate, under the conqueror's lash, the very lands that had belonged to them – "
"But listen," interposed the old man, gathering his recollections; "that puts me in mind of a song of our old friend, the friend of us poor folks – "
"The song of our Beranger, not so, grandfather —The Gallic Slaves?"
"Yes, my boy. It begins – let me see – yes – this is it:
"Some ancient Gauls, the wretched slaves,
One night, when all around were sleeping —
And the refrain ran:
"Poor Gauls, 'fore whom the world once trembled,
Let us drink to intoxication!"
Then it was our own fathers, the Gauls, that Beranger was referring to? Alas! Poor fellows, like so many others, no doubt, they took to drunkenness in order to forget their misfortunes."
"Yes, grandfather; but soon they realized that to forget one's sorrows does not deliver one therefrom; that to break the yoke is better."
"Right they were!"
"Accordingly, the Gauls, after innumerable insurrectionary efforts – "
"Well, my boy, meseems the method is not new, but ever is the right one. Ha! Ha!" added the old man, striking the bowl of his pipe with his nail. "Ha! Ha! Do you notice, George, sooner or later, it has to come to a Revolution – so it was in '89 – so it was in 1830 – so it may be to-morrow, perhaps!"
"Poor grandfather!" thought George to himself. "He little knows how near the truth he is."
And he proceeded aloud:
"Right you are! When it comes to the matter of freedom, the people must help themselves, and stick their own fingers into the dish – otherwise there will be only crumbs to pick, and the people will be robbed, as they were robbed eighteen years ago."
"And brazenly were they robbed, my poor boy! I saw it done, myself. I was there."
"Fortunately you know the proverb, grandfather —The scalded cat– enough said. The lesson will have been a good one. But to return to our Gauls. They did as you say – resorted to Revolution. She never leaves her children in the lurch. The latter, by dint of perseverance, of energy and of their own blood copiously poured out, succeeded in re-conquering a portion of their former freedom from the mailed hand of the Romans, who, moreover, had not un-christened Gaul, but only called her 'Roman' Gaul."
"Just as we to-day speak of French Algeria, I suppose?"
"Exactly so, grandfather."
"Well, thanks to God, our brave Gauls did, with the help of Insurrection, get back a little into the saddle! That soothes my blood somewhat."
"Oh, grandfather, wait, only wait!"
"Why?"
"What our fathers suffered was as nothing to what they were still to suffer."
"Think of it! And I thought they were out of the woods. What's it that happened to them?"
"Figure to yourself a horde of barbarians, semi-savages, named Franks. Thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago they emerged from the recesses