but of pagans, and of all who would depart from the religion of Christ
as interpreted by Rome. It was a death-bed repentance for the cruel
old empire, a repentance which might delay, but could not avert a
calamitous ending, and an unexpected event was near at hand which would
hasten the coming of the end.

It was in the year A.D. 375 that the Huns, a terrible race of beings,
came out from that then mysterious but now historic region, lying
between China and Russia, and surged into Europe under the leadership
of Attila, sweeping before them as they came Goths, Vandals, and other
Teutonic races, as if with a predetermined purpose of forcing the
uncivilized Teuton into the lap of a perishing civilization in the
south. Then having accomplished this, after the defeat of Attila at
Châlons in A.D. 453, they disappeared forever as a race from the stage
of human events.

This is the time when Paris was saved by Genevieve, the poor
sheperdess, who, like an early Joan of Arc, awoke the people from the
apathy of despair, and led them to victory--and is rewarded by an
immortality as "Saint Genevieve," the patron saint of Paris. It would
seem that the vigilance of the gentle saint has either slept or been
unequal to the task of protecting her city at times!

It was the combined forces of the Goth and the Frank which drove this
scourge out of Europe. Meroveus, or Meroveg, the leader of the Franks
in this great achievement, once the terror of the Gallic people, was
now their deliverer. He had won the gratitude of all classes, from
bishops to slaves, throughout Gaul, and fate had thus opened wide a
door leading into the future of that land.