"The sweet Hena, to whom the chant refers, was one of my ancestresses."
"My father often told me so; in my childhood he used to relate to me the histories of olden days, of centuries ago."
"I do not know. He used to run the Bagaudy, perhaps he now runs the Vagrery, unless he has died the brave death of a brave man. I do not expect to be enlightened upon that until he and I meet again elsewhere--"
"In those mysterious worlds that none knows and that we shall all know--seeing that we shall all continue to live there--"
"You have, then, preserved the faith of our ancestors?"
"My father taught me that to die was to change vestments, because we leave this world to be re-born in yonder ones. Death is but a transformation."
"Is it long since you were separated from your father?"
"Let us drop that subject--it is a sad one. I prefer to keep up a cheerful mood. And yet, I feel drawn towards you, although you are not cheerful--"
"We live in days when, in order to be cheerful, one's soul must be either very weak or very strong."
"I think you are both strong and weak. But as to your father--what has become of him?"
"Well, my father was a Bagauder in his youth; later, after the Franks christened us 'Vagres,' he became a Vagre. The name was changed, the pursuit remained the same."
"In Vagrery one knows but little of his mother. I never knew mine. The furthest back that I can carry my memory, I must have been seven or eight years old. I then accompanied my father in his raids, now in Provence, and now here in Auvergne. If I was tired of foot, either my father or one of his companions carried me on his back. It is thus that I grew up. We often had days of enforced rest. Sometimes the Frankish counts were so exasperated at us that they gathered their leudes and hunted us. Informed of their movements by the poor folks of the fields who loved us dearly, we would then retire to our inaccessible fastnesses, and there lie low for several days while the Franks beat the field without encountering even the shadow of a Vagre. At such intervals of rest in the seclusion of some solitary retreat, my father used to narrate to me, as I told you, the histories of olden days. Thus I learned that our family originated in Britanny, where the main stock lived and perhaps still lives to this very hour, free and in peace, seeing that the Franks have never yet been able to place their yoke upon that rugged province--its granite rocks are too hard, and its Bretons are like the granite of its rocks."