le Fort; the Capetiens were said to
have been descended from a butcher of Paris. "'In these times,'" says
Taine, quoting the Spanish chronicle, "'the kings, counts, nobles, and
all the knights, in order to be ready at any moment, kept their horses
in the hall in which they slept with their wives.' The viscount in the
tower which defends the entrance to the valley, or the passage of the
ford, the marquis thrown as a forlorn hope on the devastated frontier,
sleeps on his arms, like the American lieutenant in a blockhouse in the
far West, among the Sioux. His house is only a camp and a refuge; some
straw and a pile of leaves are thrown on the pavement of the great hall;
it is there that he sleeps with his horsemen, unbuckling a spur when he
has a chance for repose; the loopholes scarcely allow the day-light to
enter,--it is important, above all, that the arrows do not. All
inclinations, all sentiments, are subordinated to the service; there are
posts on the European frontier where the boy of fourteen is called upon
to march, and where the widow, up to sixty years of age, is compelled to
marry again. Men in the ranks, to fill up the vacancies, men at the
posts, to mount guard,--this is the cry that issues at this moment from
all human institutions, like the call of a voice of bronze." Thanks to
these stout defenders, some form of society is again made possible.

A later historian, M. Flach, in his _Origines de l'ancienne France_,
finds the germ from which sprang the whole feudal system in this
_patronage_, the system of defence of the serf and vassal by the landed
proprietor. In the great disorganization of the Roman Empire, a portion
of the public authority passed into the hands of individuals; when the
Frankish kings invaded Gaul, they found there a system of patronage
similar to their own. These great proprietors were maintained under the
first Merovingian kings, who kept them in due subjection; but as this
regulation gradually weakened under the growing power of the land-owner,
the private individual found himself ground between these two
millstones. A private patron then became his only defence, and thus was
hastened the strictly feudal system. With regard to the royal function,
which crowned this feudal system, the historian cites two quotations in
support of his thesis: "Under Louis d'Outre-mer, the legate of the Pope,
Marin, defined the royal authority,--he called it patronage
[_patrocinium_]. Forty years later the