), and it is he who lays the second foundation of modern society.

In the tenth century his extraction is of little consequence. He is
oftentimes a Carlovingian count, a beneficiary of the king, the sturdy
proprietor of one of the last of the Frank estates. In one place he is
a martial bishop or a valiant abbot in another a converted pagan, a
retired bandit, a prosperous adventurer, a rude huntsman, who long
supported himself by the chase and on wild fruits.[1109] The ancestors
of Robert the Strong are unknown, and later the story runs that the
Capets are descended from a Parisian butcher. In any event the noble of
that epoch is the brave, the powerful man, expert in the use of arms,
who, at the head of a troop, instead of flying or paying ransom, offers
his breast, stands firm, and protects a patch of the soil with his
sword. To perform this service he has no need of ancestors; all that
he requires is courage, for he is himself an ancestor; security for the
present, which he insures, is too acceptable to permit any quibbling
about his title.-Finally, after so many centuries, we find each district
possessing its armed men, a settled body of troops capable of resisting
nomadic invasion; the community is no longer a prey to strangers. At the
end of a century this Europe, which had been sacked by the Vikings, is
to throw 200,000 armed men into Asia. Henceforth, both north and south,
in the face of Moslems and of pagans, instead of being conquered it is
to conquer. For the second time an ideal figure becomes apparent
after that of the saint,[1110] the hero; and the newborn sentiment,
as effective as the old one, thus groups men together into a stable
society.--This consists of a resident corps of men-at-arms, in which,
from father to son, one is always a soldier. Each individual is born
into it with his hereditary rank, his local post, his pay in landed
property, with the certainty of never being abandoned by his chieftain,
and with the obligation of giving his life for his chieftain in time of
need. In this epoch of perpetual warfare only one set-up is valid, that
of a body of men confronting the enemy, and such is the feudal system;
we can judge by this trait alone of the perils which it wards off,
and of the service which it enjoins. "In those days," says the Spanish
general chronicle, "kings, counts, nobles, and knights, in order to be
ready at all hours, kept their horses in the rooms in which they slept
with their wive