"We shall show neither less courage nor less persistence than our ancestors," added Sacrovir. "Oh, how I shall be thrilled with ecstasy when I read those venerated lines which they have traced! But is the chirography of the Celtic or Gallic language the same exactly as the Breton, which we are accustomed to read, father?" "No, my boy. Since a number of centuries back, the Gallic chirography, which originally was the same as the Greek, began to be little by little modified in the course of time, and finally fell into disuse. But my grandfather, a working compositor, learned and well lettered, transcribed into modern Breton all the manuscripts that were in Gallic. Thanks to his work, you will be able to read those manuscripts as fluently as you read the legends that our good Gildas loves so well, and which, composed eight or nine hundred years ago, are still current in our villages of Brittany, printed on brown paper." "Father!" exclaimed Sacrovir. "One more question. Did our family always inhabit our beloved Brittany during all these centuries?" "No--not always, as you will see in these narratives. The conquest, the wars, the rude vicissitudes to which a family like ours was exposed in those evil days, often compelled our forefathers to leave their natal soil,--sometimes because they were carried away slaves or prisoners into other provinces; sometimes in order to escape death; other times, again, in order to gain their bread; still other times in obedience to foreign laws; and, finally, occasionally driven thereto by the whims of fate. Nevertheless, few are our forefathers who did not make a certain pious pilgrimage, as I have made myself, and as you, in turn will make on the first of January following the year of your majority, that is next January 1." "And why on that particular day, father?" "Because the first day of each new year has ever been a solemn day with the Gauls." "And in what does the pilgrimage consist?" "You will proceed to the druid stones of Karnak, near Auray." "Indeed, I have heard it said, father, that that assemblage of gigantic granite blocks, found down to to-day, ranked in a mysterious fashion, dates back to the remotest antiquity." "Already two thousand years and more ago, my boy, it was not known at what epoch--an epoch that is lost in the night of the past--the stones of Karnak were raised and put in place." "Oh! father, one is seized as with a vertigo in thinking of the age that those monumental stones must have." "Only God knows it, my friends! If we are to judge of their future by their past, myriads of generations will yet succeed one another at the feet of those gigantic monuments, which seem to defy the tooth of time, and upon which the eyes of our fathers have so often rested from century to century in pious meditation." "And why did they make the pilgrimage, father?"