"Brother, is not this Gaul that you lay waste with as much inveterateness as the conquerors themselves, is she not our dearly beloved country, our mother? Is it for us, her children, to join hands with the barbarians in whelming her with sorrows and trials? Like yourself, I wish to labor for the overthrow of barbarism; like yourself I wish to put an end to the craven besottedness of the oppressed; but I wish to destroy barbarism with civilization, ignorance with enlightenment, poverty with labor, slavery with the sense of national worth--a sense, alas! now almost wholly uprooted, and yet once so powerful, in the days of our fathers, when our venerated druids aroused the peoples to arms against the Romans. Holy insurrections!" "Tracked by the bishops, our last druids have died upon the scaffold!" "But the druid faith is not dead! No--no! The forms of religions pass, but their divine principle remains for all time. Revived, stimulated and regenerated by the gentle morality of Jesus, the druid faith is born anew in our breasts. It has preserved its belief in the immortality of the soul of men, in their successive re-incarnation in the starry world, to the end that by fresh trials and sufferings the wicked may become good, and the just still more perfect. Aye, humanity, whether visible or invisible, must rise from sphere to sphere in its eternal effort, in its continuous progress, towards infinite perfection. Such is our faith, the faith of us Christian druids, who practice the evangelical doctrine in all that it contains of tenderness, mercifulness, and the love of freedom--" At this point Loysik was suddenly interrupted by a voice that proceeded from a bush near the oak tree, shouting: "Relapsed! Sacrilegious wretch! Worshiper of Mammon! Hermit of the devil! Prop of Beelzebub! You shall be burned for a heretic!" It was the voice of Bishop Cautin. And almost at the same instant, from afar, from the side where the Vagres were finishing their night of wassail, these other cries were heard through the stillness of the approaching dawn: "On guard! On guard! The leudes of Count Neroweg are approaching! The count himself is at their head!" "On guard! The leudes of Count Neroweg are approaching! To arms! To arms!" Awakened from her restful sleep by the tumult and hearing the cries of the Vagres, little Odille screamed with terror as she threw herself on the neck of Ronan: "Count Neroweg! Save me!" "Fear not, poor child!" And addressing Loysik, Ronan added: "Brother, fate sends to us a descendant of that family of Neroweg, whom our ancestor Schanvoch fought two centuries ago on the borders of the Rhine. I wish to kill that barbarian, rid Gaul of him, and protect our own family from the peril of his descendants--" "Kill me!" murmured Odille, falling on her knees before the Vagre and clasping her hands. "I prefer to die at your hands rather than to fall back into the hands of the count--"