union of the conquered race with the conqueror, a natural one? Was not that love celestial that had its source in justice? I felt happy at the thought of that fusion of our two races!" Words are impotent to express certain emotions. His visage bathed in tears, Nominoë remained silent. Suddenly a voice from afar, fresh and pure--the voice of a young girl--began to sing or rather to recite to a slow and melancholy rythm, one of those bardings or national Breton songs, some of which, popular still in these days, go back to the oldest possible antiquity. The singer was taking her sheep to pasture upon one of the shaded slopes of the ridge, at the crest of which rose the ruins of the feudal dungeon. The sweet voice, thinned by the distance, seemed to descend from the skies. At the sound of the first lines of the song, despite his emotion, Nominoë felt thrilled; he listened a moment, and said to Mademoiselle Plouernel: "Strange coincidence! That chant, traditional in Brittany for centuries and centuries, recounts the death of a young girl of our family in the days of the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar." "The death of a young girl!" echoed Mademoiselle Plouernel with an indefinable smile. The last couplet of the song barely reached the ears of Bertha and Nominoë because the shepherdess was climbing the slope as she sang, and soon her voice was lost in space. Mademoiselle Plouernel had listened to the chant with profound attention, clasped hands, and eyes raised heavenward. Awaking from her revery and addressing Nominoë with an agony, the cause of which he was unable to explain, Bertha said to him: "Is the legend of the brave and sweet Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen, the daughter of your ancestor Joel, also preserved in your family? The virgin who sacrificed herself to appease the anger of Hesus?" "Yes, mademoiselle; it is one of the legends of our family. To the narrative is attached a little gold sickle, a sort of symbolic and sacred piece of jewelry that female druids wore in their belts." "So it is, Nominoë! I remember that in his manuscript Colonel Plouernel says that to each of your family narratives there is attached some trinket that is almost always symbolic and was left by the author of the story, and that, in that way, from generation to generation, the humble and antique collection of your family relics was gathered. Monsieur Plouernel mentions among others a little silver cross, left by your ancestral grandmother Genevieve, who witnessed the execution of Jesus of Nazareth in Jerusalem! What mementoes! What magnificent mementoes!" Bertha relapsed into a pensive mood, and then asked: "Tell me, Nominoë, are the sacred stones of Karnak, mentioned in the ballad of Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen, the same that are seen to this day?" "They are the same; and already in the days of Julius Caesar their origin was lost in the night of remote ages."