r him, was a philosophic reaction
against the harsh measures,[17] the bloody and treacherous natures of
the Christian emperors, and the fierceness of the Arian controversy.
The movement was but a back-wash in the stream of history, and is of
small importance. Julian's successors, Valentinian and Gratian,
reversed his policy but shared his love for the fair city on the
Seine, and spent some winters there. Lutetia had now become a rich and
cultured Gallo-Roman city.

[Footnote 17: By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to
sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had already become
persecutors. Boissier, _La Fin du Paganisme_.]

CHAPTER II

_The Barbarian Invasions--St. Genevieve--The Conversion of Clovis--The
Merovingian Dynasty_

In the Prologue to _Faust_, the Lord of Heaven justifies the existence
of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man's
activity is all too prone to flag,--

"_Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh._"[18]

[Footnote 18: "He soon hugs himself in ease at any price."]

As with men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It
was not so much a corruption of morals as a growing slackness and
apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall
of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of
slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was
content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or
incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries
the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the
imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men,
giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry sea against
their boundaries.

[Footnote 19: To protect home producers against the competition of the
Gallic wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing
better than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the
vine and olive in Gaul.]

The end of the fifth century is the beginning of the evil times of
Gallic story: the confederation of Frankish tribes who had conquered
and settled in Belgium saw successive waves of invasion pass by, and
determined to have their part in the spoils. They soon overran
Flanders and the north, and at length under Clovis captured Paris and
conquered nearly the whole of Gaul. That fair land of France, "one of
Nature's choicest masterpieces, one of Ceres' chiefest b