And surely
enough he and several other patriots had during the night, upon the
refusal of the clerk to give them the keys, clambered up the outside
of the steeple at the risk of breaking their necks a dozen times over
and hoisted the national flag. A few months later, when the opposite
cause was triumphant, he literally lost his senses. He would go about
in the street with an enormous tricolour cockade, exclaiming: "I
should like to see any one come and take this away from me," and as he
was a general favourite people used to answer: "Why, no one, Captain."
My father shared the same sentiments. Taken by the English while
serving under Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, he passed several years on the
pontoons. His great delight was to go each year, when the conscription
was drawn, and humiliate the recruits by relating his experiences as
a volunteer. Regarding with contempt those who were drawing lots, he
would add: "We used not to act in this way," and he would shrug his
shoulders over the degeneracy of the age.
It is from what I have seen of these excellent sailors, and from what
I have read and heard about the peasants of Lithuania, and even of
Poland, that I have derived my ideas as to the innate goodness of our
races when they are organised after the type of the primitive clan. It
is impossible to give an idea of how much goodness and even politeness
and gentle manners there is in these ancient Celts. I saw the last
traces of it some thirty years ago in the beautiful little island of
Brehat, with its patriarchal ways which carried one back to the time
of the Pheacians.
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