While the Jacques were unfastening the bonds that held the arms of the seigneur of Nointel, the knight of Chaumontel took a step towards his friend and said to him: "Farewell, Conrad ... you are blinded with rage ... you are weakened by the trials of last night ... you will be killed by that Hercules ... a champion by profession.... But we shall be revenged." "I killed!" cried the Sire of Nointel with a ghostly smile. "No, no; it is I who will kill the dog.... I will cut the vagabond's throat!" "Recommend your soul to St. James," said Gerard in a penetrating voice to Conrad; "an invocation to him is sovereign in cases of duels." "Oh, I shall invoke my hatred," replied Conrad twitching his arms that Adam the Devil was about to unloosen. But Jocelyn made a sign to his companion to wait a moment before untying the Sire of Nointel, and then turning to the revolted serfs he made to them this vigorous and terse address: "It is now eleven hundred years ago ... one of my ancestors, _Schavanoch the Soldier_--the foster brother of Victoria the Great, the emperor woman who predicted the enfranchisement of Gaul--fought against one of the chiefs of the Frankish hordes who then threatened to invade Gaul, our mother country; that Frankish chieftain was called _Neroweg the Terrible Eagle_, and he was the ancestor of the Sire of Nointel, whom you there see before you.... Two centuries later, the Franks, thanks to the complicity of the Bishop of Rome, had succeeded in conquering Gaul and in reducing her inhabitants to a condition of most cruel slavery; our land thereupon became a prey to our conquerors, and we moistened it with our sweat, our tears and our blood.... During the first years of the Frankish conquest, Karadeuk the Bagaude, the ancestor of both Mazurec and myself, a revolted slave, fought with Neroweg, Count of Auvergne, count by the right of rapine and murder. That Neroweg had subjected to a cruel torture Loysik the Working-Hermit and Ronan the Vagre, sons of Karadeuk the Bagaude. Bagaudie and Vagrerie were the Jacquerie of those days. Vagres and Bagaudes revenged themselves then as the Jacques do now for the oppression of the seigneurs. In that fight between Karadeuk the Bagaude and the Count Neroweg, Neroweg fell under the axe of Karadeuk.... Coming down to three centuries ago, another of my ancestors, Den-Brao the Mason was buried alive together with several other serfs, his fellow workmen, by Neroweg IV, Count of Plouernel in Brittany."