"How the Gallic people, who had known how to emancipate themselves from the powerful Roman yoke, fell and remained under the yoke of the Franks, whom they surpass a thousandfold in courage and in numbers." May it please the gods that it may not some day be in Britanny as in the other provinces of Gaul! May it please the gods that our country, the only one that to-day remains free, may never fall under the domination of the Franks and the bishops of Rome. May our druids, both the Christian and the non-Christian, continue to inspire us with a love for freedom and with the virile virtues of our ancestors. PART II THE VAGRES CHAPTER I. "WOLVES' HEADS." "'The devil take the Franks! Long live the Vagrery and Old Gaul!' Such is the cry of all Vagres. The Franks call us 'Wand'ring Men,' 'Wolves,' 'Wolves' Heads.' Let us be wolves! "My father ran the Bagaudy, and I now run the Vagrery, but both to the one cry--'The devil take the Franks!' and 'Long Live Gaul!' "Aelian and Aman, Bagauders in their days, as we in ours are Vagres, in revolt against the Romans, as we against the Franks--Aelian and Aman, put to death two centuries ago in their old castle near Paris, they are our prophets. We take communion with the wine, the treasures and the wives of the seigneurs, the bishops and rich Gauls who made common cause with the Frankish counts and dukes to whom King Clovis gave our old Gaul. The Franks have pillaged us, they massacred and burned down; so let us do likewise--pillage, massacre and burn! And let us live in joy--'Wolves,' 'Wolves' Heads' and Wand'ring men!' Vagres that we are! Let us live in summer under the green foliage, and in winter in caverns warm! "Death unto oppressors! Freedom to the slave! Let us take from the seigneurs! Let us give unto the poor! "What! A hundred kegs of wine in the master's cellar, and only the water of the stream for the wornout slave? "What! A hundred cloaks in the wardrobe, and only rags for the toiling slave? "Who was it planted the vine? Who harvested the grape and pressed it into wine? The slave! Who should drink the wine? The slave! "Who was it that tended and sheared the sheep and wove the cloth and made the cloak? The slave! "Who should wear the cloak? The slave! "Up, ye poor and oppressed! Up! Revolt! Here are your good friends the Vagres! They approach! Death to the seigneurs and the bishops! "Six men united are stronger than a hundred divided: Let us unite! Each for all, and all for each! 'The devil take the Franks! Long live the Vagrery and Old Gaul!'"