Only yesterday, as I was returning from the fields with you--from a soldier I have become a field laborer like our fathers in the days of their independence--only yesterday I pointed out to you, on the border of the stream, two hollow willow trees; they were old. Their age must now be more than three hundred years. They are so very, very old that they no longer put forth but a few straggling leaves. You asked me to tie a rope between the two trees for you to swing yourself. You noticed with surprise that I grew sad at your request, and that I suddenly became pensive. It occurred to me how, nearly three hundred years ago, by a strange coincidence it occurred to Sylvest and his sister Syomara to tie a rope between those identical trees in order to disport themselves. Nor were, alas! those recollections the only ones that those two centenarian trunks brought back to my mind. I said to you: "Look at those two trees with sadness and veneration, my son. One of our ancestors, Guilhern, the son of Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, died an atrocious death bound to one of them; Guilhern's son, a lad a little older than yourself and named Sylvest, was tied to the other willow to die the same death as his father. An unexpected accident snatched him from the frightful fate."[3] "And what was their crime?" you asked me. "The crime of the father and of his son was to have tried to escape from bondage, so as not to be forced to cultivate under a master's whip, with the slave's collar on their necks and chains to their feet, the fields that were their own patrimony. They wished to escape cultivating those fields for the benefit of the Romans who had robbed them of them." My answer astonished you still more, my child--you who always lived happy and free, who until now have known no other grief than that of the loss of your dear mother, of whom you have preserved only a vague memory. You were barely four years and two months old a short time after the victory that Gaul won over the Franks on the border of the Rhine. You will remember that I broke off our conversation, and that I relapsed into one of those fits of melancholy that I find it impossible to overcome every time I recall the terrible domestic catastrophes that befell us on the Rhine. But I always regain courage when I remember the duty imposed upon me by our ancestor Joel, who lived nearly three hundred years ago in the same place where we are now again established after our family's having experienced innumerable vicissitudes.