"And so it ever has been, my boy. You will see it--_there is not a single social, political, civil or religious reform that our fathers were not forced to conquer from century to century at the price of their blood_. Alas! This is a cruel fact--it is deplorable. There was no choice but to resort to arms so long as the only answer made by the stiff-necked and inexorable enjoyers of privilege to the tears, the sorrows, the prayers of the oppressed was--No! No! No! Then frightful outbursts of rage flared up--then torrents of blood flowed on both sides. It was by dint of unterrified valor, persistent efforts, battles and martyrdom that our fathers first broke the old shackles of slavery in which the Franks kept them since the conquest. Thence they arrived at serfdom, a somewhat less horrible condition. Next, from serfs, they became vassals, thereupon subject to mortmain--each of these a step upwards. And evermore thus, from step to step, cutting themselves by dint of abnegation a path across the centuries and all obstacles, they finally came so far as to conquer the sovereignty of the people. And you despair of the future when now, thanks to universal suffrage, the disinherited are able to impose their sovereign will upon the privileged minority! What, you despair, now that power is revokable by the voice of our representatives, whom we select as the supreme judges of the executive power! What, you despair because we have had eighteen months of constant struggle and of occasional suffering! Oh, it was not for so short a period as eighteen months that our forefathers struggled and suffered; it was for the long-drawn period of more than eighteen centuries! If every generation had its martyrs, it also registered its conquests! It is of those martyrs and those conquests that you are about to see the pious relics, the glorious trophies! Come, my children." With this solemn invocation Marik Lebrenn proceeded, followed by his family, to the room with the closed windows, which the son, the daughter and the son-in-law of the merchant now entered for the first time. CHAPTER XV. THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBER. The mysterious chamber into which Marik Lebrenn now for the first time introduced his son, his daughter and George Duchene, presented, as far as exterior appearance went, nothing extraordinary, except that it was kept always lighted by a pendant lamp of antique workmanship, after the fashion of certain consecrated sanctuaries. And was not that spot the sanctuary of pious reminiscences, of the traditions, often heroic, of that plebeian family? Under the lamp the merchant's children saw a large cloth-covered table, on which stood a casket of bronze. Around the casket and musty with centuries, lay a number of articles, some of which dated back to the very furthest antiquity, and the most recent of which were the galley-slave's ring, which the merchant had brought with him from Rochefort, and the casque of the Count of Plouernel.