"Certes, seeing that the crimes committed by these monsters are the source of the Church's wealth. You can figure it out for yourself, good old man, the murders, fratricides, parricides and acts of incest committed by the great Frankish seigneurs yield more gold sous to the fat and do-nothing bishops than all the lands, that your hard and daily toil fructifies, yield deniers to you. But listen to another of Clovis' prowesses. In the course of time he had either himself despatched or ordered others to massacre all his relatives. One day he gathers around him his forces and says with a moan: "'Woe is me! I am now left all alone, like a traveler among strangers; I have no relatives left to help me in case adversity overtake me.'" "Well, so at last he repented his many crimes--it is the least of the punishments that await him." "He repent? Clovis? He would have been a big fool if he had, good old man! Do you forget that the priests relieve him of the burden of remorse in consideration of good round pounds of gold or silver?" "And why, then, did he use those terms; why did he say: 'Woe is me! I am now left all alone, like a traveler among strangers; I have no relatives left to help me in case adversity overtake me?'" "Why? Another trick of his. No, in the language of a bishop himself who chronicled the life of Clovis, it was not that Clovis grieved over the death of all the relatives whom he had caused to be put to death; no, it was a ruse on his part when he held that language, malefactor that he was; he only wished thereby to ascertain whether there was any relative left, and then to kill him." "And yet was there not a single man resolute enough to plant a dagger in the monster's breast?" "Keep quiet, bad boy! This is the second time that you have given vent to those sentiments of murder and vengeance! You only do so to frighten me!" "Dear wife, our son Karadeucq is indignant, like anyone else, at the crimes of that Frankish King. By my father's bones! I who am not of an adventurous disposition, I say myself--it is a shame to Gaul that such a monster should have reigned fourteen years over our country--Britanny fortunately excepted." "And I, who in my trade of peddler have crossed Gaul from end to end, and seen the country's wretchedness and the bloody slavery that oppresses it, I say that the people's hatred should fall as heavily upon the bishops! Was it not they who called the Franks into Gaul? Was it not they who baptised the murderer a son of the Roman Church? Did they not propose to canonize the monster with the title of 'Saint Clovis?'" "God in heaven! Is it craziness or cowardly terror on the part of those priests?"