"Who is the present inheritor of Gaul's one-time valor? The Vagres, the 'Wolves-Heads,' the 'Wolves!' It is they alone who still carry on the struggle against the barbarians!" "And yet we are hunted like wild beasts, put to the rack and hanged if taken!" "But our nails are sharp and our teeth trenchant to tear to pieces and devour our enemies!" "And yet they call us robbers!" "And murderers!" "And sacrilegious wretches!" "Brothers, we but follow the example of our glorious new masters--the Frankish kings, dukes and counts; they kill, we massacre; they pillage, we steal; they lay waste, we burn down. Death to the seigniory!" "Sad are the times in which we live!" said the bishopess as she unloosened her long black tresses to the wind. "These are days of sanguinary fury! days of unbridled debauchery! days of vertigo, in which one rushes into evil paths with wild ecstasy. Oh, holy virtue of our mothers! tender chastity! noble and undefiled love! Where shall we look for you in these days? Shall we look for you in the hut of the female slave whom her masters outrage? Shall we look for you in the house of the free woman, whose very hearth is turned under her own eyes into a brothel? Oh! Let us shut our eyes, and die young! Will you die, my Vagre? To-morrow, at the first rays of the sun; to-morrow, at the hour when the birds awake; to-morrow put your hand in mine, and let us depart together for those unknown worlds, whither our ancestors bravely and willingly took their departure in order to live together!" "Let love reign until to-morrow! And until then, a sweet kiss, my Vagress!" The Master of the Hounds received the kiss, while his neighbor, grave like a man half-seas over, said in a magisterial voice: "Brothers, I have an idea--" "Your idea, Symphorien, seems to be to drain that amphora to the very bottom." "Yes, to begin with--and then to prove to you--_logice_ and _a priori_--" "To the devil with your Roman tongue!" "Brothers, not because one is a Vagre does it follow that he can not be versed in letters and philosophy. I used to teach rhetoric to the young clerks of the Bishop of Limoges. I received a call from the Bishop of Tulle for the same office. As I was crossing the Jargeaux mountains on the way from the one town to the other, I was captured in the woods by a band of bad Vagres--there are good and bad Vagres. And those Vagres sold me to a slave merchant, and he sold me again to the bishop of--" "The devil take this rhetorician! Look at him traveling up hills and down dales." "Such is frequently the effect of rhetoric. It carries one across the plains of imagination. But let me return to what I wanted to prove to you _logice_--it is this: We need not worry ourselves over the leudes nor any other armed bands that might be in pursuit of us, because, _logice_--the Lord God will perform a miracle in our favor to disengage us of our enemies."