(_Enter from the town-house a_ CITIZEN _of the time of Louis XIV; from the sixteenth-century prison a_ PRISONER _still wearing chains and irons on his feet and hands. His shackles now seem to be light and cause him no inconvenience. He attracts_ TYLTYL'S _attention_.) TYLTYL Who is that one? Was he chained up? GRANNY TYL Yes, he is one of your ancestors who spent nearly all his life in prison. TYLTYL It's not a thing to boast of; he'd have done better to stay at home. GRANNY TYL He did nothing wrong. He used to steal bread or other little things which one could eat, to keep his children from starving. He suffered a great deal; we think a lot of him.... (THE ANCESTORS _continue to leave their houses. An imposing and richly-dressed_ MAN _appears on the threshold of the fifteenth-century mansion_.) TYLTYL (_Pointing to him_.) And that one? GAFFER TYL That one is the richest.... It appears we were very rich at one time, but that didn't last.... However, it doesn't matter here: the only thing that counts, it seems, is what a man has done or thought.... For instance, you see those beggars over there, coming out of the church? (_Enter from the twelfth-century church some four or five_ BEGGARS, _clad in rags that are pitiful to look at, but idealized by the fairy atmosphere_.) TYLTYL Yes, any number of them. GAFFER TYL Well, it seems that several generations of us were beggars.... We succeeded one another, father and son, at the same church and in the same doorway. It was very good for us, they say. It taught us patience, resignation, endurance, temperance and the habit of never catching cold.... But do you see the oldest, the one who looks poorest of all? TYLTYL The one with the beautiful white beard? GAFFER TYL Precisely.... Well, he's the Great Mendicant, the one whom we respect most, first because he has an iron constitution and next because he appears to have thought a very great deal in his corner under the porch.... They say it's he who did most to develop our brains. TYLTYL But I don't see any women among them. Where are their wives? Weren't they married? GRANNY TYL Of course they were; but there's nothing for us women to do to-day. The men choose the women and the women the men.... When Mytyl comes, it will be our turn. TYLTYL Look, there are three more. (_A diseased_ MAN _comes out of the hospital; another, carrying a bottle and looking rather tipsy, out of the tavern; and, lastly, out of the prison, a third figure, hairy and savage of aspect, brandishing a blood-stained knife_.) GAFFER TYL (_Dismayed_.) I don't like this.... It's very tiresome that they should have been told.... TYLTYL Why, who are they? GAFFER TYL An ugly lot, those three: the sick man, the drunkard and the murderer.... They've done us a deal of harm. TYLTYL Then there was a murderer in the family? GAFFER TYL