f his predecessors.
Differing in blood from the early Burgundian rulers, these Rodolphian
kings, allied to the Carlovingian emperors and long governors of lower
or Swiss Burgundy, ruled pacifically and under the beloved Rodolph II
and his still better loved Queen Berthe, and their son Conrad, resisted
the Saracen invasion and preserved for a hundred and fifty years the
autonomy of their kingdom. Nobles with their serfs and freemen already
divided the land, their prerogatives and vassalage long since
established by the laws of Gondebaud. The Oberland, or Pays-d'en-Haut,
Hoch Gau, or D'Ogo, in the German tongue, a country no longer wild but
rich in fertile valleys and wooded mountain sides, was given to a
Burgundian lord, under the title of King's Forester or Grand Gruyer;
Count he was or Comes D'Ogo, first lord of the country afterwards called
Gruyere. Although Burgundian, the subjects of Count Turimbert were of
different races. In the country of Ogo, called Haute Gruyere, they were
German, while in the lower northern plains, called Basse Gruyere, they
were Celtic or Celto-Roman. Between these two divisions the mountain
torrent of the Sarine rushes through a deep gorge called the Pas de la
Tine. For many years the Gallo-Roman peasants feared to penetrate this
terrifying barrier between the rising valleys and the frowning heights,
until, according to a legend, a young adventurer broke his way through
the primeval woods and the rocky depths of the gorge to find out-spread
before him the fertile upper plateaux of the Pays-d'en-Haut.

"It happened," so runs another legend, "that the Roman peasants who had
passed the Pas de la Tine and led their herds along the course of the
Sarine, wished to cut their way through the thick forest, but
encountered other peasants who spoke a different language. Here
peacefully they halted on the hither side of the dividing Griesbach,
'where it touched the limit of the Alamanni.'" (_In ea parte quae facit
contra Alamannos._)

CHAPTER II

INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH

Twenty lords of Gruyere made up the line which maintained a singularly
kindly and paternal rule over the differing people of their pastoral
kingdom; all of one race, and all but the three last in the direct
descent from father to son. Six centuries they ruled, distinguished
first for their inexhaustible love of life, their knightly valor and
their fidelity to the Catholic faith. The first Count Turimbert, with
his wife Avan