Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/40

14 the God of Clotildc, and quits himself of the Germans by His help. Whereupon he is crowned in Rheims by St. Remy.

And now, in the new strength of his Christianity, and his twin victory over Rome and Germany, and his love for his queen, and his ambition for his people, he looks south on that vast Visigothic power, between Loire and the snowy mountains. Shall Christ, and the Franks, not be stronger than villainous Visigoths 'who are Arians also'? All his Franks are with him, in that opinion. So he marches against the Visigoths, meets them and their Alaric at Poitiers, ends their Alaric and their Arianism, and carries his faithful Franks to the Pic du Midi.

And so now you must draw the map of France once more, and put the fleur-de-lys all over its central mass from Calais to the Pyrenees: only Brittany still on the west, Burgundy in the east, and the white Provence rose beyond Rhone. And now poor little Amiens has become a mere border town like our Durham, and Somme a border streamlet like our Tyne. Loire and Seine have become the great French rivers, and men will be minded to build cities by these; where the well-watered plains, not of peat, but richest pasture, may repose under the guard of saucy castles on the crags, and moated