scholar, soldier, poet, gentleman, letter-writer, statesman,
Sidonius Apollinaris, who had stood on the steps of the Imperial
throne of the West, had been crowned as an orator in the Capitol,
and then had been called by the exigences of his country to give up
his learned ease and become the protector of the Arvernii as a
patriot Bishop, where he had well and nobly served his God and his
country, and had won the respect, not only of the Catholic Gauls but
of the Arian Goths. Jealousy and evil tongues had, however,
prevailed to cause his banishment from his beloved hills, and when
he repaired to the court of King Euric to solicit permission to
return, he was long detained there, and had only just obtained
license to go back to his See. He had arrived only a day or two
previously at the villa, exhausted by his journey, and though
declaring that his dear mountain breezes must needs restore him, and
that it was a joy to inhale them, yet, as he heard of the
oppressions that were coming on his people, the mountain gales could
only 'a momentary bliss bestow,' and AEmilius justly feared that the
decay of his health had gone too far for even the breezes and baths
of Arvernia to reinvigorate him.

His own mountain estate, where dwelt his son, was of difficult
access early in the year, and AEmilius hoped to persuade him to rest
in the villa till after Pentecost, and then to bless the nuptials of
Columba AEmilia, the last unwedded daughter of the house, with Titus
Julius Verronax, a young Arvernian chief of the lineage of
Vercingetorix, highly educated in all Latin and Greek culture, and a
Roman citizen much as a Highland chieftain is an Englishman. His
home was on an almost inaccessible peak, or PUY, which the Senator
pointed out to the Bishop, saying--