The frightful predictions of Victoria, the illustrious foster-sister of my ancestor Schanvoch, have not been verified. May they never be! Gaul continues a dependence of the Roman Emperors. Occasionally a traveler reaches these parts, penetrating into these remote regions of our old Armorica. From them we have learned that, in some of the other provinces there have been several popular uprisings of considerable strength and generally called "Bagaudies." These uprisings must have taken place shortly after the death of my ancestor Schanvoch. Brittany has remained free from the revolts of the "Bagauders." The region enjoys profound tranquility. The impost that we pay into the emperor's fisc is not too heavy. We live peacefully and free. Several of our ancestors, during the darksome days of their enslavement to Rome, and when they were steeped in ignorance and misery, recorded on our family parchments that such was the leaden uniformity of their days, spent by them from dawn to dusk, in oppressive labors, that they had nothing to say except: "I was born, I have lived and I shall die in the sorrows of slavery." May it please the gods that the happiness of the generations that are to follow me be in turn, so uniform, that each of my descendants may, as I do now, have nothing to add to our family chronicles but these lines with which I shall close my narrative: "I have lived happy, peaceful and obscure in our Armorican Brittany cultivating our ancestral fields with the help of my family. I shall depart from this world without fear or regret when it will please Hesus to call me away to live again in yonder unknown worlds." I am now aged eighteen years. The family relics in my possession consist of Hena's gold sickle, Guilhern's little brass bell, Sylvest's iron collar, Genevieve's silver cross, and the casque's lark of Schanvoch. THE END. FOOTNOTES [1] The Frankish chiefs, at the time of the conquest, daubed their hair with tallow mixed with crushed limestone, to make their hair a glaring reddish-yellow. Such was the beauty of the period. [2] Ardent, or Fiery. See "The Brass Bell," the second work of this series. [3] For the source of these recollections, see the third volume of this series, entitled "The Iron Collar." [4] The color of the Gallic emblem was crimson red.