. They slake their nostalgia a little in the
presence of that _enfant perdue_ of a lost civilization.

For this is the world of Gregory of Tours, of which you may read in his
_History of the Franks_. The rule under which it lives is the rule of
the horrible Merovingian kings. Side by side with the villas barbarism
spreads and flourishes like a jungle growth. Learning is dying--hardly
the ghost of a university is left--and Gregory himself who came of a
great Gallo-Roman family and was a bishop bewails his ignorance of
grammar. The towns are shrinking, crouched behind their defences. The
synagogues are flaming, and the first step has been taken in that tragic
tale of proscription and tallage, tallage and expulsion which (it seems)
must never end. As to politics, the will of the leader and his retinue
is the rule of the Franks, and purge and bloodbath mark every stage in
the rivalry of the Merovingian princes. The worst of them are devils
like Chilperic and Fredegond, the best of them are still barbarians like
that King Guntram, who fills so many indulgent pages in Gregory of
Tours. He is a vaguely contemporary figure, a fat, voluble man, now
purring with jovial good nature, now bursting into explosions of wrath
and violence, a strange mixture of bonhomie and brutality. It is an
ironic commentary on what has happened to civilization that Gregory
should regard him with affection, that he should be known as 'Good King
Guntram' and that the church should actually have canonized him after
his death. Good King Guntram; Michelet has summed him up in a phrase 'Ce
bon roi a qui on ne reprochait que deux ou trois meurtres.'

CONCLUSION

These were the men who lived through the centuries of Roman fall and
Barbarian triumph, and who by virtue of their elevated position, their
learning, and talents, should have seen, if not foretold, the course of
events. And yet as one contemplates the world of Ausonius and Sidonius
(for by the time of Gregory of Tours it was already dead) one is, I
think, impelled to ask oneself the question why they were apparently so
blind to what was happening. The big country houses go on having their
luncheon and tennis parties, the little professors in the universities
go on giving their lectures and writing their books; games are
increasingly popular and the theatres are always full. Ausonius has seen
the Germans overrun Gaul once, but he never speaks of a danger that may
recur. Sidonius lives in a worl