"Oh, children, this room could not contain the masterpieces of that one artisan, the glory of Gallic artisanship. The coins that he has struck as the minter of Clotaire II, of Dagobert and of Clovis II have admirable reliefs: they are gold thirds of a sou of a superb stamp. Eloi succeeded in all the branches of the goldsmith's art. He excelled, like the goldsmiths of Limoges, in the incrustation of enamel and the setting of precious stones; he also excelled, as did the goldsmiths of Paris, in statuaries of hammered gold and silver. He chiseled jewelry as delicately as the jewelers of Metz. The cloths of woven gold thread manufactured under his eyes and after his designs, were not less magnificent than those of Lyon. My boys, what a hard worker was Eloi. Ever at his forge from earliest dawn, ever with his leathern apron on his loins, and the file, the hammer or the burin in his hand. He often did not leave his workshop until a late hour in the night, and had ever at his side his favorite apprentice, a Saxon named Thil. I knew that Thil. He was then an old man, and he also was a great artist. They should be models for you." "Eloi was not a slave, and as he enjoyed the fruit of his labor he must have become very rich, Father Bonaik?" "Yes, my boys, very rich. Dagobert, upon succeeding to the throne of his father Clotaire II, kept Eloi as his goldsmith. But the good Eloi, mindful of his hard condition as an artisan, and of the cruel fate of the slaves who had often been his fellow-workmen, when he became rich spent all his income in ransoming slaves. He used in that way to emancipate twenty, thirty and even fifty on one day. He often went to Rouen and bought whole cargoes of slaves of both sexes taken from all countries to that town, celebrated for its market of human flesh. Among those unfortunate people were Romans, Gauls, English, and even Moors, but above all Saxons. If it happened that the good Eloi did not have money enough to purchase the slaves, he used to distribute among them all the money he had in order to relieve their misery. 'How often,' Thil, his favorite apprentice said to me, 'his purse being exhausted, I saw my master sell his cloak, his belt and even his shoes.' But you must know, my boys, that that mantle, that belt, those shoes were embroidered with gold and often enriched with pearls. The good Eloi, who ornamented the robes of others, also took pleasure in ornamenting his own. In his younger years he was magnificently dressed." "It was the least he could do to deck himself out well--he who decked others so well. It is not as with us who work on gold and silver, and never have but rags."