illions of workers who were not there
forty years ago,--that is the explanation of the progress of our
neighbors as well as of the stagnation of our own activity. All the more
that the quality of the French tends to diminish with their quantity;
... we can foresee the day when there will be two Germans against one
Frenchman, and this prospect fills us with fear for the future of our
country, for we cannot comfort ourselves with illusions, we cannot
believe in the perpetual peace, we know that history is a _Vie Victis_
continual."

Therefore, let us hasten to contemplate this great and most admirable
Babylon before Cyrus comes.

_Paris, Rue Boissonade._

INTRODUCTION

GALLO-ROMAN AND PRE-MEDIAEVAL PERIODS

[Illustration: DISTRIBUTING BREAD, TWELFTH CENTURY.

Water-color by George Rochegrosse.]

Lucotocia, says that somewhat inexact geographer, Strabo, "is the city
of the _Parisii_, who dwell along the river Seine, and inhabit an island
formed by the river." Ptolemy, who has been thought to have been
somewhat better informed concerning the Parisii than with regard to any
of the other small tribes of Gaul, calls their capital LUCOTECIA; but
both they and their town appear for the first time in history
fifty-three years before the birth of Christ, when Caesar, in his
_Commentaries_, relates, himself, that he summoned a general assembly of
the Gauls at LUTETIA, the capital of the Parisii. At this date, he was
already master of the greater part of the country now called France.
More than four hundred years later, Julian, surnamed the Apostate,
nephew of Constantine the Great, after having passed more than two years
in this city, which he called "his dear LEUCETIA," was proclaimed
emperor here by his soldiers, who refused to obey the orders of
Constantius and return to the East. It is surmised by the scholars that
the imperial author of the _Misopogon_ adopted this form of the name of
the town on the Seine through an affectation of deriving it from the
Greek, in which language he wrote, and, as is still evident in those of
his works which have survived, in a style remarkably pure.

Lutetia, of which the modern French make Lutece, is supposed to have
been derived from the Celtic _louk-teih_, which signified the place of
morasses; and the name of the Parisii from the Celtic _par_, a species
of boat, and _gwys_, in composition _ys_, man, whence _parys_,
boatmen,--these islanders being supposed to have been skilf