y, which becomes so
horrible that Amata brings Lavinia home and commits suicide, Turnus
and Aeneas finally meet in duel, but, although Juno would fain
interfere once more in behalf of her protege, Jupiter refuses to allow
it. But he grants instead his wife's petition that the Trojan name and
language shall forever be merged into that of the Latin race.

"Let Latium prosper as she will,
Their thrones let Alban monarchs fill;
Let Rome be glorious on the earth,
The centre of Italian worth;
But fallen Troy be fallen still,
The nation and the name."

Toward the end of this momentous encounter, during which both heroes
indulged in sundry boastful speeches, a bird warns Turnus that his end
is near, and his sister Juturna basely deserts him. Driven to bay and
deprived of all other weapons, Turnus finally hurls a rock at Aeneas,
who, dodging this missile, deals him a deadly wound. Turnus now
pitifully begs for mercy, but the sight of Pallas' belt, which his foe
proudly wears, so angers Aeneas that, after wrathfully snatching it
from him, he deals his foe the deadly blow which ends this epic.

"What! in my friend's dear spoils arrayed
To me for mercy sue?
'Tis Pallas, Pallas guides the blade:
From your cursed blood his injured shade
Thus takes atonement due."
Thus as he spoke, his sword he drave
With fierce and fiery blow
Through the broad breast before him spread:
The stalwart limbs grow cold and dead:
One groan the indignant spirit gave,
Then sought the shades below.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: All the quotations in this article are from Virgil's
Aeneid, Conington's translation.]

[Footnote 6: See the author's "Story of the Romans."]

FRENCH EPICS

The national epic in France bears the characteristic name of Chanson
de Geste, or song of deed, because the trouveres in the north and the
troubadours in the south wandered from castle to castle singing the
prowesses of the lords and of their ancestors, whose reputations they
thus made or ruined at will.

In their earliest form these Chansons de Geste were invariably in
verse, but in time the most popular were turned into lengthy prose
romances. Many of the hundred or more Chansons de Geste still
preserved were composed in the northern dialect, or langue d'oil, and,
although similar epics did exist in the langue d'oc, they have the
"great defect of being lost," and only fragments of Flamenca, etc.,
no