"Did I not tell you, friend," said Joel, "that Syomara, Margarid's grandmother, was the peer of your Gallic woman of the Rhine?" "And must not the noble name bring good luck to my daughter!" added Guilhern tenderly kissing the blonde head of the child. "That powerful and chaste story is worthy of the lips that told it," said the stranger. "It also proves that the Romans, our implacable enemies, have not changed. Avaricious and debauched were they once--and are to-day. And seeing that we are speaking of the avaricious and debauched Romans and that you love stories," he added with a bitter smile, "you must know that I have been in Rome ... and that I saw ... Julius Caesar ... the most famous of the Roman generals, as also the most avaricious and the most debauched man of all Italy. I would not venture to speak of his infamous acts of libertinage before women and young girls." "Oh! Did you see that famous Julius Caesar? What kind of a looking man is he?" asked Joel with great inquisitiveness. The stranger looked at the brenn as if greatly surprised at the question, and answered with an effort to suppress his anger: "Caesar is nearing old age; he is tall of stature; his face is lean and long; his complexion pale; his eyes black; his head bald. Seeing the man combines in his person all the vices of the worst women of the Romans, he is possessed, like them, of extraordinary personal vanity. Accordingly, in order to conceal his baldness, he ever carries a chaplet of gold leaves on his head. Is your inquisitiveness satisfied, Joel? Would you want more details about Caesar's infirmities? That he is subject to epileptic fits?... That--" But the stranger did not finish his sentence. Letting his eyes wander over the assembled family of the brenn, he cried with towering rage: "By the anger of Hesus! Can it be that all of you--as many as you are here capable of seizing the sabre and the sword but insatiable after idle stories--can it be you do not know that a Roman army, after having invaded under the command of Caesar one-half of our provinces, has taken winter quarters in the country of Orleans, of Touraine and of Anjou?" "Yes, yes; we have heard about it," calmly said Joel. "People from Anjou, who came here to buy beef and pork, told us about it." "And it is with such unconcern that you speak of the Roman invasion of Gaul?" cried the traveler. "Never have the Breton Gauls been invaded by strangers," proudly answered the brenn of the tribe of Karnak. "We shall remain spotless of the taint. We are independent of the Gauls of Piotou, of Touraine, of Orleans and of the other sections of the land, just as they are independent of us. They have not asked for our help. We are not so constituted as to offer ourselves to their chiefs and to fight under them. Let everyone guard his own honor and his own province. The Romans are in Touraine ... but it is a long way from Touraine to here."