e Goths, Vandals, and other
Teutonic races, as if with a predetermined purpose of forcing the
uncivilized Teuton into the lap of a perishing civilization in the
south. Then having accomplished this, after the defeat of Attila at
Chalons in A.D. 453, they disappeared forever as a race from the stage
of human events.

This is the time when Paris was saved by Genevieve, the poor
sheperdess, who, like an early Joan of Arc, awoke the people from the
apathy of despair, and led them to victory--and is rewarded by an
immortality as "Saint Genevieve," the patron saint of Paris. It would
seem that the vigilance of the gentle saint has either slept or been
unequal to the task of protecting her city at times!

It was the combined forces of the Goth and the Frank which drove this
scourge out of Europe. Meroveus, or Meroveg, the leader of the Franks
in this great achievement, once the terror of the Gallic people, was
now their deliverer. He had won the gratitude of all classes, from
bishops to slaves, throughout Gaul, and fate had thus opened wide a
door leading into the future of that land.

CHAPTER IV.

Gaul had been Latinized and Christianized. Now one more thing was
needed to prepare her for a great future. Her fibre was to be
toughened by the infusion of a stronger race. Julius Caesar had shaken
her into submission, and Rome had chastised her into decency of
behavior and speech, but as her manners improved her native vigor
declined. She took kindly to Roman luxury and effeminacy, and could no
longer have thundered at the gates of her neighbors demanding "land."

The despotism of a perishing Roman Empire had become intolerable; and
the thoughts of an overtaxed and enslaved people turned naturally to
the Franks. They had rescued them from one terrible fate, might they
not deliver them from another? And so it came about that the young
savage Chlodoveg, or _Clovis_, grandson of Meroveus, found himself
master of the fair land long coveted beyond the Rhine; and Gaul and
Roman alike were submerged beneath the Teuton flood, while Clovis,
sitting in the Palace of the Caesars, on the island in the Seine, was
wearing the kingly crown, and independent and dynastic life had
commenced in what was hereafter to be not Gaul, but _France_.

But the king of whom she had dreamed was of her own race; not this
terrible Frank. Had she exchanged one servitude for another? Had she
been, not set free, but simply annexed to the re