red shone like carbuncles, he impressed all by the majesty of his
bearing, in spite of a rather shrill and feeble voice and a certain
asymmetrical rotundity below the belt.

[Illustration: ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE.]

Abbot Fulrad was a sturdy prince and for long disputed the possession
of some lands at Plessis with the bishop of Paris. The decision of the
case is characteristic of the times. Two champions were deputed to act
for the litigants, and met before the Count of Paris[29] in the
king's chapel of St. Nicholas in the Palace of the Cite, and a solemn
judgment by the cross was held. While the royal chaplain recited
psalms and prayers, the two champions stood forth and held their arms
outstretched in the form of a cross. In this trial of endurance the
bishop's deputy was the first to succumb; his fainting arms drooped
and the abbot won his cause.

[Footnote 29: The Carlovingians had been careful to abolish the office
of mayor of the palace.]

Paris had grown but slowly under the Frankish kings. They lived ill at
ease within city walls. Children of the fields and the forests, whose
delight was in the chase or in war, they were glad to escape from
Paris to their villas at Chelles or Compiegne. But the civil power of
the Church grew apace. In the early sixth century the abbots of St.
Germain des Pres at Paris held possession of nearly 90,000 acres of
land, mostly arable, in various provinces: their annual revenue
amounted to about L34,000 of our money: they ruled over more than
10,000 serfs. From a list of the lands held in Paris in the ninth
century by the abbey of St. Pierre des Fosses,[30] and published in
the _Tresor des pieces rares ou inedites_, we are able to form some
idea of the vast extent of monastic possessions in the city. The names
of the various properties whose boundaries touch those of the abbey
lands are given: private owners are mentioned only four times, whereas
to ecclesiastical and monastic domains there are no less than ninety
references. These monastic settlements were veritable garden cities,
where most of our modern fruits, flowers and vegetables were
cultivated; where flocks and herds were bred, and all kinds of
poultry, including pheasants and peacocks, reared. Guilds of craftsmen
worked and flourished; markets were held generally on saints' days,
and pilgrimages were fostered. Charlemagne was an honest coiner and a
protector of foreign traders; he was tolerant of the Jews, the only
capital