crowns of Europe. So important was the
little Gruyere to the French kings and the emperors of Germany that, as
has been related, they occupied themselves with its internal affairs,
attempting to intervene in such matters as runaway marriages and the
rival claims for succession. But the attitude of its rulers towards
royal and imperial mandates was so independent, their maintenance of
their feudal sovereignty was so tenacious that they preserved the high
and happy ideals of their house, and were the last of the Swiss nobles
to yield to the march of democracy.

Their long rule, extending through six centuries of internal wars,
during times when oppression was the prerogative of their order, was
stained by no single act of cruelty. In the peculiar charm of their
race, in the unique influence of their position in Europe, as in the
unbroken length of their rule, the counts of Gruyere were the most
important of all the noble Swiss families. Titles and aristocratic
privileges have long since vanished from republican Switzerland, where
liberty triumphant, the age-wrought jewel of a thousand years, shines
clearly among the tumults of the warring nations. But remote among its
mountains, a cherished place of pilgrimage and refreshment, the little
feudal city still crowns its green hill, and in the Gruyere people the
Celtic soul, undying fresh and free, still sings in their love songs and
war songs, still speaks in their legends and tales of its birth in the
morning of time.

APPENDIX

The traditions of Romand Helvetia have preserved the memory of the
establishment of Vandal or Burgundian hordes in that part of Gaul.

Thus has arisen the belief that the once wild region traversed by the
river Sarine came into the possession of some chief of these tribes who
there settled with his followers. The unavowed author (Bonsetten) of a
history of the Counts of Gruyere is of the opinion that it is possible
that, in accordance with the customs of the Germanic tribes, that
Gruerius, the hero of the popular legend, or his warriors, might have
carried a Grue (crane) as a symbol of a migratory race on their helmets
or shields, and that the leader himself might have adopted the name
Gruerius from the emblem.

The theory, however, disagrees entirely with the tradition that the
Burgundians were so fond of liberty that they bore the figure of a cat
upon their banners. It is well known that the arms of Gruyere are a Grue
on a scarlet fie