by
her own followers, was, by Clotaire's orders, tied naked to the tail of
a wild horse and dragged to death.

Such were the manners and customs of the Merovingians.

[Illustration: DEATH OF SAINTE-GENEVIEVE. After the mural painting, in
the Pantheon, by J.-P. Laurens.]

There are various accounts of the two patron saints of France and Paris.
It is to Gregoire de Tours that we owe our first knowledge of Saint
Denis, who, according to his statement, came to preach Christianity in
Lutetia in the year 245, with the friar Rustique and the deacon
Eleuthere. Dionysius, bishop of the Parisians, he says, full of zeal for
the name of Christ, suffered many persecutions, and finally martyrdom.
Other historians assign to Saint Martin, rather than to Saint Denis, the
glory of having converted the Gauls to Christianity; some place his
mission even before the year 100, and the Abbe Hilduin confounds him
with Saint Denis the Areopagite. But, according to Gregoire, Denis,
Rustique, and Eleuthere were beheaded in the year 272, by order of the
prefet Percennius, on a mountain situated near Paris, which accordingly
took the name of the Mont des Martyrs (Montmartre). The prefet had given
orders to have the bodies thrown into the Seine, but a Roman lady, named
Catulla, although not a Christian herself, caused them to be sought for
in the night and piously buried in a locality known as Catolocus. Grain
was sown over the graves, and when the fury of persecution was passed,
they were disinterred and deposited in a tomb.

According to the popular legend (to which the municipal and national
authority has given a sort of official sanction by M. Bonnat's very
vigorous and realistic presentation on the walls of the Pantheon), after
having had his head struck off, the saint arose on his feet, picked it
up and walked away, carrying the severed organ in his hands, to the
great surprise of the spectators. In this manner he traversed the space
of a league, till he came to the spot where his church now stands, the
angels meanwhile chanting around him _Gloria tibi Domine_, and others
repeating three times the _Alleluia_. It was this unusual promenade that
gave rise to the well-known proverb that it is only the first step that
costs.

In 286 the weight of the Roman yoke and the persecutions of the
Christians had become so cruel that there was a rebellion, headed by
Salvianus Amandus and Lucius Pomponius AElianus, who put themselves at
the head of the