ros, the capital redeemed its right
to that title by its gallant defence against the Northmen, or Normans,
and its valiant count, Eudes, having brought the sluggish emperor to the
heights of Montmartre only to see him conclude an unworthy peace with
the invaders, founded himself the first national dynasty when his fat
suzerain was deposed in the following year. "One of the greatest figures
of the Carlovingian decadence," says M. Faure, in a recent monograph,
"he continued the monarchy of Charlemagne without changing anything in
the institutions, and he gave a precise form to a power that before him
was still undecided, that of duke of the Franks."

The royal authority waxed and waned, the turbulent nobles exhausted
themselves in war, in struggles amongst themselves and against the king,
but the wealth and power of the Church steadily increased. Occasionally
only, when its interference was too flagrantly unjust, its authority was
defied. The first Capetiens, like the first Carlovingians, whether from
motives of self-interest or sincere faith, were its faithful allies.
Hugues Capet liked better to wear his cope as Abbot of Saint-Martin de
Tours than his crown, and he restored to the Church several abbeys which
he possessed. His son, Robert the Pious, was almost a saint, and the
princes of this dynasty, on the whole, merited the title which Rome gave
them, of "eldest sons of the Church." Their piety was not altogether
without reward: the bishops of the Ile-de-France and the abbots, chiefs
of the abbeys founded by royal grace, brought more than once not only
earthly weapons but a spiritual one, that of excommunication, to the
defence of the sovereign.

Robert's first care, after his accession to the throne in 996, was to
rebuild the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois and the monastery of
Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which had been destroyed by the Northmen. He
also erected in his palace a chapel dedicated to Saint Nicolas, which,
in 1154, entirely restored, became the Sainte-Chapelle. He washed the
feet of the poor, he fed, it is said, sometimes a thousand of them a
day; nothing was too sacred for them, neither the silver ornaments of
his lance nor the gold fringe of his robe. He was constant in his
attendance on the church services, he composed hymns, himself, which
were long retained. Nevertheless, having espoused his cousin Berthe, he
found himself excommunicated by the Pope, Gregory V. Among the earliest
works of the paint