"While the League, the Catholic Union, on the contrary, represented the foreigner, the party of Rome, of Spain and of the Inquisition," added Salaun Lebrenn. "In its hatred of the Protestants and of the spirit of liberty, the League aimed at a crushing despotism that was to be exercised in the interest of its own members. Did they not nurse the parricidal thought of dismembering France? Did they not scheme to offer the throne to Philip II, that bigoted monarch whose bloody tyranny stupefied the world? All honor to your ancestors, Monsieur De Witt! By dint of their sacred revolt they dealt the first blow to the Spanish monarchy, and they raised, heavily paying therefor with their own blood, this Republic whose existence is now threatened by Louis XIV." "Your observations are just, monsieur," answered John De Witt. "Yes, to the eternal glory of Protestantism, which is my faith, the Protestants, having been placed outside the pale of common rights and kept in constant dread of death, were driven, in the course of the last century and of this very century also, to ask for help from their coreligionists of other countries, in order to defend their families, their hearths, their faith and their threatened lives. But never was their action stained with any project of aggrandizement at the cost of France! Their request for help always had for its purpose only the triumph of the Reformation and the freedom of all! In short, when, oppressed in mind, when physically trampled upon, when plundered of its property, when deprived of its rights, when persecuted in its faith, a people invokes against its tyrant the help of a friendly and disinterested nation, it is not, then, upon the foreigner that it calls but upon its own brothers in the human family." "My son," said Salaun Lebrenn to Nominoë, "you are still young; we live in evil days; you will no doubt take a part in struggles that are as grievous as any that our ancestors experienced in past ages, during which they were alternately vanquishers and vanquished. Never forget the noble sentiments you have just heard uttered by one of the greatest citizens who can do honor to a republican people. Kings are outside of the pale of the law, outside of common rights!" "Father," answered Nominoë in a moved and serious voice, "the sentiments I have just heard will forever remain graven in my memory, and likewise will the memory of the illustrious man that I to-day have the honor of seeing. I pledge undying hatred to tyranny and royalty." And, in response to what appeared to him a movement of embarrassment on the part of John De Witt at the crudity of a praise that seemed exaggerated, the young mariner added: