The old, old story, you say? Be it so; you will the more easily remember it. The Amienois remembered it so carefully, that, twelve hundred years afterwards, in the sixteenth century, they thought good to carve and paint the four stone pictures Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 of our first choice photographs. (N. B.—This series is not yet arranged, but is distinct from that referred to in Chapter IV. See [Appendix II].). Scene 1st, St. Firmin arriving; scene 2nd, St. Firmin preaching; scene 3rd, St. Firmin baptizing; and scene 4th, St. Firmin beheaded, by an executioner with very red legs, and an attendant dog of the character of the dog in 'Faust,' of whom we may have more to say presently.
Following in the meantime the tale of St. Firmin, as of old time known, his body was received, and buried, by a Roman senator, his disciple, (a kind of Joseph of Arimathea to St. Firmin,) in the Roman senator's own garden. Who also built a little oratory over his grave. The Roman senator's son built a church to replace the oratory, dedicated it to Our Lady of Martyrs, and established it as an episcopal seat— the first of the French nation's. A very notable spot for the French nation, surely? One deserving, perhaps, some little memory or monument,—cross, tablet, or the like? Where, therefore, [Pg 6] do you suppose this first cathedral of French Christianity stood, and with what monument has it been honoured?
It stood where we now stand, companion mine, whoever you may be; and the monument wherewith it has been honoured is this—chimney, whose gonfalon of smoke overshadows us—the latest effort of modern art in Amiens, the chimney of St. Acheul.
The first cathedral, you observe, of the French nation; more accurately, the first germ of cathedral for the French nation—who are not yet here; only this grave of a martyr is here, and this church of Our Lady of Martyrs, abiding on the hillside, till the Roman power pass away.
Falling together with it, and trampled down by savage tribes, alike the city and the shrine; the grave forgotten,—when at last the Franks themselves pour from the north, and the utmost wave of them, lapping along these downs of Somme, is here stayed, and the Frankish standard planted, and the French kingdom throned.
Here their first capital, here the first footsteps [1-3] of the Frank in his France! Think of it. All over the south are Gauls, Burgundians, Bretons, heavier-hearted nations of sullen mind: at their outmost brim and border, here at last are the Franks, the source of all Franchise, for this our Europe. You have heard the word in England, before now, but English word for it is none! Honesty we have of our own; but Frankness we must learn of these: nay, all the western nations of us are in a few centuries more to be known by this name of Frank. Franks, of Paris that is to be, in time to come; but French of Paris is in year of grace 500 an unknown tongue in Paris, as much as in Stratford-att-ye-Bowe. French of Amiens is the kingly and courtly form of Christian speech, Paris lying yet in Lutetian clay, to develope into tile-field, perhaps, in due time. Here, by soft-glittering Somme, reign Clovis and his Clotilde. [Pg 7] And by St. Firmin's grave speaks now another gentle evangelist, and the first Frank king's prayer to the King of kings is made to Him, known only as "the God of Clotilde."
I must ask the reader's patience now with a date or two, and stern facts—two—three—or more.
Clodion the leader of the first Franks who reach irrevocably beyond the Rhine, fights his way through desultory Roman cohorts as far as Amiens, and takes it, in 445.[1-4]