e, stained glass, medals and coins. This region is very rich not
only in Roman remains, but in druidical stones and other vestiges of the
races which dwelt here before Caesar came. Marcus Aurelius, Trajan,
Hadrian, Alexander Severus, Probus, Gordian, Constantine and Constantius
are all represented on the coins found in and around the property of M.
de Courval; but one of his most interesting acquisitions was a silver
coin bearing the name of Clovis, with the title of 'imperator.' There is
a record at Anizy of a treasure of coins of Aurelius, found there so
long ago as in the middle of the twelfth century; and under the
bishop-dukes of Laon a collection of Roman coins and vases was gradually
formed at the mairie of Anizy, which 'disappeared' soon after the
'patriots' of Chauny undertook to 'liberate' that commune.

The American Vicomtesse de Courval, who now owns Pinon, and passes a
part of each year there, is the widow of a son of this Ernest de
Courval.

Looking backward dispassionately over this 'centennial record' of two
considerable estates in the Department of the Aisne, what advantages,
social, political, or economical, can be shown to have enured to the
people of the commune of Anizy and of Pinon from the revolutionary
processes to which those estates were subjected a hundred years ago? Not
a man in Anizy or in Pinon owns a rood of land now which he might not
just as easily have owned had the alienation of the Church property in
those communes been conducted through the gradual and systematic
processes of law and order. Instead of one remarkable and interesting
chateau, these communes would now possess two, each in the natural
course of things, a centre of local activity and civilisation. Instead
of one ancient church, much despoiled and damaged, Anizy would now
possess three such churches, each in its own way an object of interest
to architects and artists, and it would be possible for an honest
gendarme or a poor labourer on the highway to hear mass, if he liked, in
any one of them, without incurring the wrath of his superiors and the
loss of his daily bread.

CHAPTER X

IN THE AISNE--_continued_

LAON

The lofty hill on which the Sires de Coucy planted their chief fortress
rises above the fields and forests of the Soissonnais as the Mont
St.-Michel rises above the waves and the sands of the Norman coast.

The narrow streets and quaint old houses of the little town of
Coucy-le-Chateau are hud