ble _rois faineants_,
degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at
fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were
thirty. The bow of power is to him who can bend it, and in an age when
human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is
weakness. Soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians
were thrust aside by the more puissant Carlovingian race.

Charles Martel, although buried with the Frankish kings at St. Denis,
was content with the title of Duke of the Franks, and hesitated to
proclaim himself king. He, like the other mayors of the palace, ruled
through feeble and pensioned puppets when they did not contemptuously
leave the throne vacant. In 751 Pepin the Short sent two prelates to
sound Pope Zacchary, who, being hard pressed by the Lombards, lent a
willing ear to their suit, agreed that he who was king in fact should
be made so in name, and authorised Pepin to assume the title of king.
Chilperic III., like a discarded toy, was relegated to a monastery at
St. Omer, and Pepin the Short anointed at Soissons by St. Boniface
bishop of Mayence, from that sacred "ampul full of chrism" which a
snow-white dove had brought in its mouth to St. Remi wherewith to
anoint Clovis at Rheims. In the year 754 Stephen III., the first pope
who had honoured Paris by his presence, came to ask the reward of his
predecessor's favour and was lodged at St. Denis. There he anointed
Pepin anew, with his sons Charles and Carloman, and compelled the
Frankish chieftains, under pain of excommunication, to swear
allegiance to them and their descendants.

The city of Lutetia had much changed since the messengers of Pope
Fabianus entered five centuries before. On that southern hill where
formerly stood the Roman camp and cemetery were now the great basilica
and abbey of St. Genevieve. The amphitheatre and probably much of the
palace of the Caesars were in ruins, all stripped of their marbles to
adorn the new Christian churches. The extensive abbatial buildings and
church, resplendent with marble and gold, on the west, dedicated to
St. Vincent, were henceforth to be known as St. Germain of the Meadows
(des Pres), for the saint's body had been translated from the chapel
of St. Symphorien in the vestibule to the high altar of the abbey
church a few weeks before the pope's arrival at St. Denis. The
Cite[28] was still held within decayed Gallo-Roman walls, and the
Grand and Petit P