another century were still known only as the
Pirates, and the Pirates' Duke. In that year he was baptised by the
Archbishop of Rouen, and received from the Karoling King all the lands
from "the river of Epte to the sea, and westwards to Brittany," with
the hand of the Princess Gisela. Robert, Duke of the Franks, came
back with him to Rouen to be his godfather, and for seven days the
"King of the Sea" wore the white robes of innocence, and his followers
eagerly joined him in the fold of Christianity, with results whose
worldwide importance were only to be seen more than a century later.
For the present the wolves were quite ready to lie down with the
lambs, but they kept their brutal dignity and coarse jests throughout
all the solemn ceremonial. The pirate who was sent to do submission
for the Duchy, embraced the royal foot so roughly that the King fell
backwards off his throne, and in a roar of Norman laughter the Norman
rule began that was to last for three centuries in France and spread
from Palermo to the Tees. The fable of this rudely-treated monarch
reflects more than the anxiety of Norman chroniclers to hide the least
appearance of submission; it suggests the fact of very actual weakness
in these dying Karolings. Rollo's coming had decided for the French
dynasty of Paris as against the Frankish dynasty of Laon. Both
Karolings and Merovingians had been essentially of German stock. It
was only late in the ninth century that Paris, the chief object of the
Northerners' attack upon the Seine, arose as the national bulwark
against the invader, and became a ducal city that was to be a royal.
Its Duke, Robert the Strong, the forefather of Capets, of Valois, and
of Bourbons, had a son, Eudes (or Odo), whose gallant repulse of the
Pirates had given him a throne that was still held by his descendants
a thousand years later, and he ruled in the French speech, while the
Karolings of Laon still used the Teutonic idiom. When Laon was joined
to Paris in 987 by the election of Hugh, modern France really began
with a French king ruling at Paris, and a German emperor as alien to
the realm of the Capets as was his brother of Byzantium. But there is
still much to happen before the date of 987 can be safely reached,
and the last ineffectual years of Charles the Simple gave Rollo every
opportunity to strengthen his new possessions in security.

The young blood, the adventurous spirit, the thirst for conquest, that
his Scandinavian foll