"Exactly. The Romans, once vanquished by Brennus, had in the meantime become powerful. They profited by the divisions among our fathers; and they invaded the land--" "Exactly as the Cossacks and the Prussians invaded us!" "Exactly so. But what the Cossack and Prussian Kings, the good friends of the Bourbons, did not dare to do--not that they lacked the wish--the Romans did. Despite a heroic resistance, our ancestors, ever brave as lions, but unfortunately divided, were reduced to slavery, as the Negroes are to-day in some colonies." "Is such a thing possible!" "Yes. They wore iron collars, bearing the initials of their masters, when those initials were not branded on their foreheads with a hot iron." "Our fathers!" cried the old man, joining his hands with pain and indignation. "Our fathers!" "And when they tried to run away, their masters had their noses and ears cropped, if not their hands and feet." "Our fathers!" "Other times their masters would cast them to wild beasts for amusement, or cause them to be put to death under frightful tortures if they refused to cultivate, under the conqueror's lash, the very lands that had belonged to them--" "But listen," interposed the old man, gathering his recollections; "that puts me in mind of a song of our old friend, the friend of us poor folks--" "The song of our Beranger, not so, grandfather--_The Gallic Slaves_?" "Yes, my boy. It begins--let me see--yes--this is it: "Some ancient Gauls, the wretched slaves, One night, when all around were sleeping-- And the refrain ran: "Poor Gauls, 'fore whom the world once trembled, Let us drink to intoxication!" Then it was our own fathers, the Gauls, that Beranger was referring to? Alas! Poor fellows, like so many others, no doubt, they took to drunkenness in order to forget their misfortunes." "Yes, grandfather; but soon they realized that to forget one's sorrows does not deliver one therefrom; that to break the yoke is better." "Right they were!" "Accordingly, the Gauls, after innumerable insurrectionary efforts--" "Well, my boy, meseems the method is not new, but ever is the right one. Ha! Ha!" added the old man, striking the bowl of his pipe with his nail. "Ha! Ha! Do you notice, George, sooner or later, it has to come to a Revolution--so it was in '89--so it was in 1830--so it may be to-morrow, perhaps!" "Poor grandfather!" thought George to himself. "He little knows how near the truth he is." And he proceeded aloud: "Right you are! When it comes to the matter of freedom, the people must help themselves, and stick their own fingers into the dish--otherwise there will be only crumbs to pick, and the people will be robbed, as they were robbed eighteen years ago." "And brazenly were they robbed, my poor boy! I saw it done, myself. I was there."