The Pilgrim's Shell; Or, Fergan the Quarryman: A Tale from the Feudal Times

"But how could we have merited the terrible punishment that seems reserved to us?"

"Oh," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with a sigh, "my happiness rendered me forgetful of the misfortune of our brothers! I was selfish!"

"Dear father, you surely exaggerate the faults or errors of your life."

"Millions of serfs and villeins people the lands of the seigneurs and the clergy. Among them, some drag along a painful existence, that ends in death from exhaustion and misery; others are hanged from the patibulary forks. Those unhappy people are Gauls like ourselves. If some townsmen live in tranquility in the cities, when they have for seigneur so gentle a master as Simon of Nantes, millions of serfs and villeins, on the other hand, are devoted to all the miseries of life, and victims to the seigniories and the Church."

"But, father, it did not depend upon you to alleviate the ills of these wretched folks."

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1

A Gallic heroine of the second century.

2

A Norse chieftain who led a piratical invasion of France in the eighth century, and was pacified with the fief of Normandy where he and his followers in arms settled.