"How strange the emotions that come over one," remarked Velleda, "when the long procession of the personages of our ancient family files before our mind's eye in the living flesh, I may say, as if they emerged from the dust of the ages! _Hena_, the virgin of the Isle of Sen; _Joel_, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak; _Sylvest_, the Roman slave, and his sister _Syomara_; then _Genevieve_, who witnessed the execution of Jesus of Nazareth; _Schanvoch_, the soldier and foster-brother of Victoria the Great; then _Ronan the Vagre_, the intrepid insurgent against the Frankish conquest; _Loysik the hermit laborer_, who saw Brunhild die; _Amael_, Charles Martel's companion in arms, and appointed keeper of the last pitiful scion of the once redoubtable Clovis; _Vortigern_, the beloved of Thetralde, Charlemagne's daughter; _Eidiol_, the Parisian skipper, besides _Gaëlo the Pirate_ and ancestor of the Prince of Gerolstein and companion in arms of Rolf, who became Duke of Normandy and son-in-law of the French King Charles the Simple; _Yvon the Forester_, an eye-witness of the death of Louis the Do-Nothing, the last scion of the Carlovingian dynasty, succeeded by Hugh Capet who enthroned his house with the aid of adultery and murder; _Fergan the Quarryman_, serf of the seigneur of Plouernel, and who, departing for Palestine, was present at the siege and capture of Jerusalem. His son _Colombaik_, one of the bold communiers of the city of Laon, who battled against their episcopal seigneur in the endeavor to emancipate the communes from the feudal yoke; _Karvel the Perfect_, done to death with his sweet wife _Morise_ during the Crusade against the Albigensians; _Mazurec the Lambkin_, the husband of Aveline-Who-Never-Lied, daughter of William Caillet, the immortal chieftain of the Jacques; _Jocelyn the Champion_ who witnessed the martyrdom of Joan Darc, the Maid of Gaul; _Christian the Printer_, whose daughter _Hena_ was burned alive before Francis I; _Antonicq_, who battled intrepidly at the siege of La Rochelle by the side of _Cornelia Mirant_, his brave bride-to-be; _Salaun, the mariner_, one of the chiefs in the revolt of the vassals of Brittany who endeavored to impose the Peasant Code upon their seigneurs and bishops during the reign of Louis XIV. Finally, _John Lebrenn_, our own grandfather, whose sister _Victoria_ was the victim of the lewdness of Louis XV--that John Lebrenn, who was commissioned as a guard over Louis XVI, but who, alas! did not live to hail the Republic of 1848! When so many members of our race and our blood rise before my mind from the vasty depths of the centuries that have rolled by, a vertigo seizes me as I climb the ladder from Age to Age up to the fountainhead of our family, in the days of the Republic of the Gauls." Velleda's words were listened to with rapt attention by all the members of her family. Her father was the first to break the silence: