The Galley Slave's Ring Part 5

"That's also your fault! To tell me I find your soup bad, while it tastes delicious!" complained the old man, moderating his pace and smacking his lips with great gusto. "It is the G.o.ds' own nectar!"

"Without vainglory," replied George, smiling, "I enjoyed a great reputation in the regiment for my leek soup. Good, I shall now fill your pipe."

George then leaned over to the old man and said to him as he patted him on the back:

"That's right--my good old grandfather loves to pull at his little pipe in his bed, do you not?"

"What shall I say, George? You turn me into a Pacha; aye, a Pacha!"

answered the old man, while his grandson went for the pipe that lay on a table, filled it with tobacco, lighted it, and presented it to old father Morin. The old man was thereupon propped up well in his bed, and began to smoke his delicious pipe.

George sat down at the foot of the bed, and said:

"What do you propose to do to-day?"

"I shall take my little stroll on the boulevard, where, if the weather is good, I shall sit down for a while on a bench."

"Hem! Grandfather, I think you would better postpone your promenade. You must have noticed yesterday how large the crowds were that gathered at several places. They almost came to blows with the munic.i.p.alists and city sergeants. It may be even worse to-day."

"I know it, my boy. Are you taking a hand in these tussles? I know full well how tempting it is to do so when one's rights are invaded. It is unworthy of the government to forbid the banquets. But I shall feel very uneasy on your score."

"You need not feel uneasy about me, grandfather. There is nothing to fear, as far as I am concerned. But take my advice. Do not go out to-day."

"Very well, my boy, I shall stay indoors. I shall entertain myself a little reading your books, and shall look at the pa.s.sers-by from the window, smoking my pipe the while."

"Poor grandfather," observed George with a smile. "From our high floor you see hardly more than moving hats."

"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 pa.s.s. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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--