Paris past & present . t is a fine device, and may she neversink. CHAPTER III. Cruelty of Merovingian monarchs—A palace rich ingreat souvenirs — It is now the principal courthouse—A famous Marble Table—Hall of priileand luxury—Hawthorn planting in the monthof May—The rough and unpolished Conciergerie—Those imprisoned in it in olden and moderntimes—A long trail of blood and misery—The cellof Marie Antoinette and others. The period of the Dark Ages was prior tothe reign and death of Charlemagne. It is cus-tomary to locate these ages in the time of theMerovingian kings, or from about 561 to 748,
Paris past & present . t is a fine device, and may she neversink. CHAPTER III. Cruelty of Merovingian monarchs—A palace rich ingreat souvenirs — It is now the principal courthouse—A famous Marble Table—Hall of priileand luxury—Hawthorn planting in the monthof May—The rough and unpolished Conciergerie—Those imprisoned in it in olden and moderntimes—A long trail of blood and misery—The cellof Marie Antoinette and others. The period of the Dark Ages was prior tothe reign and death of Charlemagne. It is cus-tomary to locate these ages in the time of theMerovingian kings, or from about 561 to 748, aperiod of nearly two centuries. It was a timewhen there were no schools for the laity, nobooks for them, no elevating instruction of anykind, is the usual way of exjjressing it. Pro-fessor Edgar Sanderson says that the first halfof the mediaeval period has been known as theDark Ages, but this, he observes, is somewhatof a misnomer, for the light of learning wasnever wholly extinguished. Certainly the. TJIE KEx\L CAPITOL OF PARIS. 47 founding of churches was a great fact m thehistory of Paris during those dark days;while the preservation of the colleges, and thesupport of the Masters and Doctors, as theteachers were called, shows the existence of anintellectual aristocracy during the reigns of thelong-haired kings. The history of Paris shows further that theseMerovingian chiefs, quite as cruel as were mon-archs long after their time, resided in the townat frequent intervals, living generally in theRoman palace of the Cite. In that palace oc-curred the very atrocious crime of Childebertand Chlotaire—both of them Kings of Parisat the same time—who assassinated the twosons of their own brother who had been sentto them by the boys grandmother. Afterthat Childebert went to live with his Ultrogothe, at the Palais des Thermes;the ancient Roman gardens were full of appleand pear trees and flower beds, and in themwas shown to subsequent generations theal
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