"Mindful of the service that you rendered my grandfather at the battle of Poitiers, I meant to be generous towards you. I meant to do the right thing by myself, by your people, and by you. I hoped to see you, after this day spent in close intimacy with me, drop your prejudices, and to be able to say to you: I have vanquished the Bretons by force of arms; I desire to affirm my conquest by persuasion. Return to your country; report to your countrymen the day that you spent with Charles; they will trust your words, seeing that they place implicit confidence in you. You were the soul of the last two wars that they sustained against me. Be now the soul of our pacification. A conquest founded on force is often ephemeral; a conquest cemented in mutual affection and esteem is imperishable. I trust in your loyalty to gain the hearts of the Bretons to me. Such was my hope. The bitter injustice of your words dashes it. Let us think of it no more. You shall remain here as a hostage. I shall treat you as a brave soldier, who saved my grandfather's life. Perhaps in time you will judge me more justly. When that day shall have come, you will be allowed to return to your own country, and I feel sure you will then tell them what is right, as to-day you would only tell them what is wrong. All things will come in due season." "Although your hopes can not realize the object that you proposed, they, nevertheless, are an evidence of a generous soul." "By the cap of St. Martin! You Bretons are a strange people. What! If you should believe that I deserve esteem and affection, and if your countrymen should share your opinion, would neither you nor they accept with joy the authority that you now submit to by force?" "With us it is no question of having a more or less worthy master. We want no master." "And yet I am your master, ye pagans!" "Until the day when we shall have reconquered our independence by a successful insurrection." "You will be crushed to dust, exterminated! I swear it by the beard of the eternal Father." "Exterminate the last of the Breton Gauls, strangle all the children, and you will then be able to reign over the desert of Armorica. But so long as there lives a single man of our race in our country, you may be able to vanquish, but never to subjugate it." "But tell me, old man, is it that my rule is so terrible, and my laws so hard?" "We want no foreign domination. To live according to the laws of our fathers, freely and as becomes free men, to choose our chiefs, to pay no tribute, to lock ourselves up within our own frontiers and to defend them--these are our aspirations. Accept them and you will have nothing to fear from us." "To dictate conditions to me! to me, who reign as sovereign master over all Europe! To have a miserable population of shepherds and husbandmen impose conditions to me! to me, whose arms have conquered the world! Impudence can reach no further!"