The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn

"The same penalty as for parricide if they have any noticeable effect."

Another, Monsieur C – , rose, and in concert with two of his royalist colleagues proposed with great insistence that the penalty of death be made applicable to all who hoisted the tricolored flag.

9

This portrait of courage is justified by the heroic death of two young girls, about eighteen years old, who, their hair flowing to the winds, their arms bare, held their place on a barricade near St. Denis Street in June, 1848.

10

More than anyone else, we deplored the sad insurrection of June, 1848, and the blood that flowed both before and behind the barricades; but we are equally revolted by the abominable calumnies with which all the insurrectionists, without distinction, have been pursued. We call to witness brave General Piré, who, in a letter to the Representatives of the people, expresses himself as follows:

"Citizen Representatives, having entered first by force of bayonet behind the barricade on National St. Martin Street on the 23rd of June, I found myself for several minutes alone among insurrectionists animated by unspeakable exasperation. We fought on both sides to the last notch. They could have killed me; they did not do so. I was in the ranks of the National Guard, and an old General. They respected a veteran of Austerlitz and Waterloo. The memory of their generosity will never leave me. I fought them to the point of death. I found them brave, they spared my life. They were defeated – unhappy ones with whom I should have shared my bread, come what might.

    "Piré.
    "Lieutenant General."

We would also cite this passage from "L'Atelier":

"Three months have passed since the days of June, and now one can judge coolly of the cause of those terrible events. Doubtless there can be found, as always, men who exploit, for their ambition, public evils, men who would sacrifice the whole world to their hateful spirit of egotism. But the true mover, that which put guns in the hands of 30,000 combatants, was the desolating misery which deprives men of their reason. Fathers of families can alone judge of its sway.

"Here is the testimony of one whom the Council of War has just condemned to ten years at hard labor:

"'I had been hunting two days for work, and was unable to find any… I returned to my sick wife. She was lying on her bed without waist or vest, with a rag of cover thrown over her. For an instant I thought of suicide, but I rejected the idea when I saw at her side the little pink face of my Infant, who slept deep in such misery… My wife died. I remained alone with my two children. It was two days before the insurrection. My son, showing me the basket that he carried lunch in regularly to school, said to me, "Papa, haven't you given me anything?" Well, sir, that is why I listened to my unhappy comrades… I had suffered like them… When they came for me, I yielded, but I said: "I beg of you, by the memory of my poor holy mother: if we are defeated, I shall be thrown into a dungeon, I shall not complain, I shall not reproach you; but if we are the victors, – no vengeance, pardon to all, for this war among Frenchmen is horrible."' – Testimony of N. A., before the Council of War."

11

"The use of tanned skins for writing dates back to remote antiquity, and was common among the people of Asia, as well as among the Greeks, Romans and Gauls. At the Library at Brussels is a manuscript of the Pentateuch which is thought to antedate the Ninth Century B. C. It is written on fifty-seven skins sewed together, making a roll of about forty yards in length." – Ludovic Lalaune, Curiosities of Bibliography, p. 11.

12

"Antique geneologies, diligently kept by the bards, seemed to designate those who could pretend to the dignity of chiefs of a canton or family; for these words were synonymous in the tongue of the Gallic Breton, and the lines of descent were the basis of their social status." – Augustin Thierry, Social State of the Bretons, History of the Conquest of Britany, pp. 10, 11.