[13] “Jovem brutum atque hebetem.”
[14] Not to be confounded with the Royal Provost, a king’s officer, who replaced the Carlovingian counts and Capetian viscounts.
[15] The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at Christmas time.
[16] By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had become persecutors. Boissier, La Fin du Paganisme.
[17] “He soon hugs himself in unconditioned ease.”
[18] To protect home producers against the competition of the Gallic wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing better than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the vine and olive in Gaul.
[19] The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe, used as a missile or at close quarters.
[20] Her figure was a favourite subject for the sculptors of Christian churches. She usually bears a taper in her hand and a devil is seen peering over her shoulder. This symbolises the miraculous relighting of the taper after the devil had extinguished it. The taper was long preserved at Notre Dame.
[21] If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were vituperative rather than convincing. “Your Jupiter,” said she, “is omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator.”
[22] Merovée, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was fabled to be the issue of Clodio’s wife and a sea monster.