conquests with their grim train of sufferings for the conquered; but
these storm-clouds had not burst over the island. The shocks which
preceded the fall of the Roman Empire had not been felt, nor had the
throes which inaugurated the birth of Frankish rule in Gaul and Saxon
supremacy in Britain, disturbed the prevailing tranquillity. Occasional
descents of pirates, Northmen from Scandinavian homes or Southmen from
the Iberian peninsula, had hitherto had a beneficial effect by keeping
alive the martial spirit and the vigilance necessary for self-defence.
In the third century three Roman ships had been driven on shore and
lost; the legionaries who escaped had established themselves in the
island, having indeed for the moment no alternative. When their
commander succeeded in communicating with Gaul he suggested a permanent
occupation, being secretly influenced by tales of mineral wealth to
which he had lent an ear. Disillusioned and recalled, he was followed by
a sybarite, whose palate was tickled by banquets of fish of which he
wrote in raptures to his friends at Capri and Brindisi. This excellent
man, dying of apoplexy in his bath, was replaced by a rough soldier, who
lost no time in procuring the evacuation of a post where he saw with a
glance that troops were uselessly locked up. From this time nothing had
been heard of the Romans; their occupation had lasted forty years, and
in another forty the only physical traces of it remaining were a camp at
Jerbourg, the nearly obliterated tessellated pavement and fragments of
wall belonging to the sybarite's villa, which occupied the site in the
King's Mills Valley where the Moulin de Haut now stands, the pond in
the Grand Mare in which the voluptuary had reared the carp over which,
dressed with sauces the secret of which died with him, he dwelt lovingly
when stretched on his triclinium, and the basins at Port Grat in which
he stored his treasured mullet and succulent oysters. The islanders were
of one mind in speeding the parting guests, but the generation which saw
them go were better men than their fathers who had trembled at the