EPILOGUE
I request my reader to leap over the space of time that elapsed since weleft the family of Lebrenn assembled in the room, held to be somysterious by Gildas, and which contained the archives or narratives ofthe 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--areassembled on the evening of that Sunday in the modest upper parlorconnected 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 shookeverywhere--revolutions in Naples, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Rome. Italywas on fire. The German Confederation contemplated declaring itself arepublican federation at the diet of Frankfort. Frankfort was in revolt;Hungary up in arms; Poland and Spain shook to their very center; allEurope was in a revolutionary ferment, Russia alone excepted. What,however, could that country's autocrat do against the confederation ofall the other peoples, leagued against him in a holy, the holiest ofalliances! One more step, and our generation would have hailed theUnited States of Europe. Alas! The sublime moment was missed! The planmiscarried. Will it be long before the opportunity returns?"
"What does it matter, my children," replied Lebrenn, "whether weactually witness or not the dawn, if we have the certainty that the sunof that beautiful day is bound eventually to shine over a regeneratedworld! The very disappointment of 1848 is a positive earnest that theprophecy of our ancestress Victoria the Great will be accomplished. Doyou for a moment imagine that the lava is cold which, in 1848, ranboiling over such wide areas of Europe? No! No! Whatever appearances maybe, whatever the present depression, revolutionary thought is at thisvery hour germinating under the soil. It is spreading and gaining indepth through a thousand underground rootlets. Sooner or later, itssudden and last irresistible explosion will be heard. Upon the ruins ofthe old social system a new social order will be established.
"There can be no doubt whatever, my children, regarding that great andcrowning event. Progress is the law of humanity--for society as well asfor the individual. Our plebeian narratives furnish the irrefutableproof. Our ancestors, subjected, first by the Roman and then by theFrankish conquest, to a most galling slavery, progressed by little andlittle towards freedom. Originally slaves and sold and exploited andtreated 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 of1848. When we see such progress traced across the pages of thecenturies, how can we entertain any doubts as to what the future has instore?"
"A knowledge of the past," observed George Duchene, "imparts a firmfaith in the future."
"How strange the emotions that come over one," remarked Velleda, "whenthe long procession of the personages of our ancient family files beforeour mind's eye in the living flesh, I may say, as if they emerged fromthe dust of the ages! _Hena_, the virgin of the Isle of Sen; _Joel_, thebrenn of the tribe of Karnak; _Sylvest_, the Roman slave, and his sister_Syomara_; then _Genevieve_, who witnessed the execution of Jesus ofNazareth; _Schanvoch_, the soldier and foster-brother of Victoria theGreat; then _Ronan the Vagre_, the intrepid insurgent against theFrankish conquest; _Loysik the hermit laborer_, who saw Brunhild die;_Amael_, Charles Martel's companion in arms, and appointed keeper of thelast pitiful scion of the once redoubtable Clovis; _Vortigern_, thebeloved of Thetralde, Charlemagne's daughter; _Eidiol_, the Parisianskipper, besides _Gaelo the Pirate_ and ancestor of the Prince ofGerolstein and companion in arms of Rolf, who became Duke of Normandyand son-in-law of the French King Charles the Simple; _Yvon theForester_, an eye-witness of the death of Louis the Do-Nothing, the lastscion of the Carlovingian dynasty, succeeded by Hugh Capet who enthronedhis house with the aid of adultery and murder; _Fergan the Quarryman_,serf of the seigneur of Plouernel, and who, departing for Palestine, waspresent at the siege and capture of Jerusalem. His son _Colombaik_, oneof the bold communiers of the city of Laon, who battled against theirepiscopal seigneur in the endeavor to emancipate the communes from thefeudal yoke; _Karvel the Perfect_, done to death with his sweet wife_Morise_ during the Crusade against the Albigensians; _Mazurec theLambkin_, the husband of Aveline-Who-Never-Lied, daughter of WilliamCaillet, the immortal chieftain of the Jacques; _Jocelyn the Champion_who witnessed the martyrdom of Joan Darc, the Maid of Gaul; _Christianthe Printer_, whose daughter _Hena_ was burned alive before Francis I;_Antonicq_, who battled intrepidly at the siege of La Rochelle by theside of _Cornelia Mirant_, his brave bride-to-be; _Salaun, the mariner_,one of the chiefs in the revolt of the vassals of Brittany whoendeavored to impose the Peasant Code upon their seigneurs and bishopsduring the reign of Louis XIV. Finally, _John Lebrenn_, our owngrandfather, whose sister _Victoria_ was the victim of the lewdness ofLouis XV--that John Lebrenn, who was commissioned as a guard over LouisXVI, but who, alas! did not live to hail the Republic of 1848! When somany members of our race and our blood rise before my mind from thevasty depths of the centuries that have rolled by, a vertigo seizes meas I climb the ladder from Age to Age up to the fountainhead of ourfamily, in the days of the Republic of the Gauls."
Velleda's words were listened to with rapt attention by all the membersof her family. Her father was the first to break the silence:
"My children, if indeed our family history is priceless, the reasonlies in that that history is the history, not of a family merely, but,above all, of all the proletarians and all the bourgeois of Gallicextraction, of that Gallic race that was conquered and subjugated by theFranks, the dominant race, until 1789, the date of their finalemancipation. The struggle of the _Children of Joel_ across the ageswith the _Children of Neroweg_, of whom the Count of Plouernel is adescendant, is a summary of the centuries-old struggle between thevanquishers and the vanquished, the oppressors and the oppressed. Byimparting to us a knowledge and the consciousness of what ourforefathers have undergone in order to regain their freedom and theirrights, this history must render us all the prouder and more jealous ofthe boon that we have conquered at the cost of so many tears, of suchuntold privations, and of such torrents of blood. It must inspire uswith 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 man
George's counteance=>George's countenance
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "If the Gallic tongue has been in some part preserved by the bards,and by bards in possession of the druidic traditions, that could onlyhave taken place in Armorica, that province which for so many centuriesformed an independent state, and which, in spite of its annexation toFrance, has remained Gallic in physiognomy, in costume, and in language,down to our own day."--Ampere, _History of Literature_.
[2] Villemarque, in his excellent _Popular Songs of Brittany_, assignsthis ballad, which is still heard among the strolling ballad-singers ofthat province, to the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century.
[3] _Sounn ann dud Laour_ (The Song of the Poor), Villemarque, _PopularSongs of Brittany_.
[4] _Popular Songs of Brittany_, Villemarque.
[5] Villemarque traces this chant, still very popular in Brittany, backto the Eleventh or Twelfth Century; hence for seven or eight hundredyears it has been passed down by word of mouth from generation togeneration.
[6] It is above all for our brothers of the people that we wrote thishistory. In a form which we strove to render as fascinating as possible.We hope they have followed the notes, for these are, so to speak, thekey of the chronicle, and the proof that under the form of romance onecan find the most scrupulous history.
[7] Gregory, Bishop of Tours, says of Clovis, the first Frankish King byDivine right:
"Having killed several other Kings besides, and even some of his closestrelatives, Clovis extended his power ov
er all the Gauls. Nevertheless,having one day assembled his men, he is reported to have spoken thus ofthe relatives he had himself caused to be executed and murdered:--'Woeis me, I am left a wanderer among wanderers, and I have no relativeswho, in case of need could come to my assistance.' Not that he wasgrieved over their death," adds the Bishop of Tours, "but he held thislanguage to discover whether there remained anyone _whom he could stillput to death_."--Gregory of Tours, _History of the Franks_, book II,chapter XLII.
Still this Gallic bishop slurs over the terrible hypocrisy of theFrankish conqueror, sullied with thefts, murders, incest, andfratricide. He says:
"Thus each day God caused the enemies of Clovis to fall into his hands,and extended his kingdom, because he walked with a pure heart beforeHim, and did what was agreeable in the eyes of God." (book II, chapterXL).
On the character of some of the early bishops themselves, Gregory shedsthis light:
"Salone and Sagitaire, Bishops of Embrun and Gap, once masters of theirbishoprics, began to distinguish themselves with a senseless fury byusurpations, murders, adulteries, and other excesses." (book V, chapterXXI).
[8] The White Terror, the massacre in the south of France, theexecutions without appeal which followed the first restoration of Kingsby Divine right, are well known to all. It did not stop there.
On October 27, 1815, Monsieur Pasquler read in the Chamber a report onthe projected law on seditious speeches and writings:
"We would pronounce," he declared, "the penalty of _hard labor_ againstall seditious slogans, speeches or writings if delivered individually.
"_Death_, if they are the result of concerted action.
"_The same penalty as for parricide_ if they have any noticeableeffect."
Another, Monsieur C----, rose, and in concert with two of his royalistcolleagues proposed with great insistence that the penalty of death bemade applicable to all who hoisted the tricolored flag.
[9] This portrait of courage is justified by the heroic death of twoyoung girls, about eighteen years old, who, their hair flowing to thewinds, their arms bare, held their place on a barricade near St. DenisStreet in June, 1848.
[10] More than anyone else, we deplored the sad insurrection of June,1848, and the blood that flowed both before and behind the barricades;but we are equally revolted by the abominable calumnies with which allthe insurrectionists, without distinction, have been pursued. We call towitness brave General Pire, who, in a letter to the Representatives ofthe people, expresses himself as follows:
"Citizen Representatives, having entered first by force of bayonetbehind the barricade on National St. Martin Street on the 23rd of June,I found myself for several minutes alone among insurrectionists animatedby unspeakable exasperation. We fought on both sides to the last notch.They could have killed me; they did not do so. I was in the ranks of theNational Guard, and an old General. They respected a veteran ofAusterlitz and Waterloo. The memory of their generosity will never leaveme. I fought them to the point of death. I found them brave, they sparedmy life. They were defeated--unhappy ones with whom I should have sharedmy bread, come what might.
"Pire. "Lieutenant General."
We would also cite this passage from "L'Atelier":
"Three months have passed since the days of June, and now one can judgecoolly of the cause of those terrible events. Doubtless there can befound, as always, men who exploit, for their ambition, public evils, menwho would sacrifice the whole world to their hateful spirit of egotism.But the true mover, that which put guns in the hands of 30,000combatants, was the desolating misery which deprives men of theirreason. Fathers of families can alone judge of its sway.
"Here is the testimony of one whom the Council of War has just condemnedto ten years at hard labor:
"'I had been hunting two days for work, and was unable to find any.... Ireturned to my sick wife. She was lying on her bed without waist orvest, with a rag of cover thrown over her. For an instant I thought ofsuicide, but I rejected the idea when I saw at her side the little pinkface of my Infant, who slept deep in such misery.... My wife died. Iremained alone with my two children. It was two days before theinsurrection. My son, showing me the basket that he carried lunch inregularly to school, said to me, "Papa, haven't you given me anything?"Well, sir, that is why I listened to my unhappy comrades.... I hadsuffered like them.... When they came for me, I yielded, but I said: "Ibeg of you, by the memory of my poor holy mother: if we are defeated, Ishall be thrown into a dungeon, I shall not complain, I shall notreproach you; but if we are the victors,--no vengeance, pardon to all,for this war among Frenchmen is horrible."'--Testimony of N. A., beforethe Council of War."
[11] "The use of tanned skins for writing dates back to remoteantiquity, and was common among the people of Asia, as well as among theGreeks, Romans and Gauls. At the Library at Brussels is a manuscript ofthe Pentateuch which is thought to antedate the Ninth Century B. C. Itis written on fifty-seven skins sewed together, making a roll of aboutforty yards in length."--Ludovic Lalaune, _Curiosities of Bibliography_,p. 11.
[12] "Antique geneologies, diligently kept by the bards, seemed todesignate those who could pretend to the dignity of chiefs of a cantonor family; for these words were synonymous in the tongue of the GallicBreton, and the lines of descent were the basis of their socialstatus."--Augustin Thierry, _Social State of the Bretons, History of theConquest of Britany_, pp. 10, 11.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends