been one day twisting his leg for amusement. Epictetus said,
'If you continue, you will break my leg.' Epaphroditus went on, the
leg was broken, and Epictetus only said, 'Did I not tell you that
you would break it?'

Hugo seems to have in mind the short reigns of Galba (r. A.D. 68-9),
Otho (r. A.D. 69), and Vitellius (r. A.D. 69), all of whom perished
by violence.

_Vitellius_ was famous even among the later Romans for his gluttony
and voracious appetite. During the four months of his reign he is
said to have spent seven millions sterling on the pleasures of his
table. When at last the people rose against him, and the soldiers
proclaimed another emperor, Vitellius was found hiding in his
palace. He was dragged out into the Forum and killed on the
Gemoniae _(les Gemonies)_, a staircase which went up the Capitoline
Hill and on which the corpses of criminals were exposed before being
thrown into the Tiber. This is the _Escalier_ referred to in the
next line.

l. 57. These tortures were not known in Rome. They suggest rather
the Middle Ages.

_le cirque_. The circus where chariot-races took place. Hugo seems
to be confusing it with the Colosseum, where the gladiatorial
combats were fought.

_Le noir gouffre cloaque_. The Cloaca Maxima was the great sewer of
Rome. It is still in existence and in use. Hugo here first makes it
the symbol of the destruction towards which the Roman Empire was
tending, and then treats it half as a concrete reality, half as a
figure for some underworld in which dethroned but living emperors
meet. This blending of the symbol and the thing symbolized is
characteristic of the poet.

_chiffres du fatal nombre_: the figures or digits that stand for the
doomed number, i.e. the number with which a doomed man is marked.

_Attila_, the famous king of the Huns, 'the Scourge of God' as he was
called, reigned A.D. 434-53.

LE MARIAGE DE ROLAND.

The poem is founded on the 'Chanson de Girart de Viane,' one of the
Carolingian cycles of epic poems, written by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube,
a poet of Champagne who lived in the first half of the thirteenth
century.

The story, as told in the _Chanson_, is as follows:--

Girard, or Girart, the son of Garin of Montglave, a poor nobleman,
goes with his brother Renier to the court of Charlemagne to seek
his fortune. After being at court for some time he quarrelled with
the Emperor, owing to the latter marrying the widow of Aubery, duc
de Bourgogne, who w