formed but a part was enacted
that scene so vividly described in the pages of Gibbon,[15] when, in
355, Julian, after his victories over the Alemanni and the Franks, was
acclaimed Augustus by the rebellious troops of Constantius. He had
admonished the sullen legions, angry at being detached from their
victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier,
and had urged them to obedience, but at midnight the young Caesar was
awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and
at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized
and carried through the streets in triumph, lifted on a shield, and
for diadem crowned with a military collar, to be enthroned and saluted
as emperor. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with
tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before his
elevation to the imperial responsibilities and anxieties. He writes of
the busy days and meditative nights he passed in his dear Lutetia,
with its two wooden bridges, its pure and pleasant waters, its
excellent wine. He dwells on the mildness of its climate, where the
fig-tree, protected by straw in the winter, grew and fruited. One
rigorous season, however, the emperor well remembered[16] when the
Seine was blocked by huge masses of ice. Julian, who prided himself on
his endurance, at first declined the use of those charcoal fires which
to this day are a common and deadly method of supplying heat in Paris.
But his rooms were damp and his servants were allowed to introduce
them into his sleeping apartment. The Caesar was almost asphyxiated by
the fumes, and his physicians to restore him administered an emetic.
Julian in his time was beloved of the Lutetians, for he was a just and
tolerant prince whose yoke was easy. He had purged the soil of Gaul
from the barbarian invaders, given Lutetia peace and security, and
made of it an important, imperial city. His statue, found near Paris,
still recalls his memory in the hall of the great baths of the Lutetia
he loved so well.

[Footnote 15: French authorities believe the scene to have been
enacted in the old palace of the Cite.]

[Footnote 16: The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in
Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at
Christmas time.]

The so-called apostasy of this lover of Plato and worshipper of the
Sun, who never went to the wars or travelled without dragging a
library of Greek authors afte