world, nor for hope in their hearts. With the king effaced, and the
people effaced, there remained only bands of feudal barons trying to
efface each other!

As in the last days of the Merovingians, light came from an unexpected
quarter. The tide turned toward centralization. Robert the Strong, a
man of obscure family, who had laid down his life in a very heroic
resistance to the Northmen, had won the titles "Count of Paris" and
"Duke of France," which he bequeathed, with the estates attached to
them, to his successors.

Somewhat after the manner of the Pepins, this powerful and resourceful
family by sheer native ability grasped one after another the sources of
power in the state; and in the year 987 the dynasty established by
Pepin disappeared, and Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Abbot, was
declared by the Pope of Rome to be "King of France, in virtue of his
great deeds." It was the ecclesiastical office of this descendant of
Robert the Strong which gave the name to the dynasty that had come to
save France a second time from disintegration. Because he was the
wearer of the _Chape_, or _Cope_, the name _Chapet_, or _Capet_, became
that of the line.

There now commenced a struggle between the antagonistic principles of
royalty and aristocracy; a conflict which was going to last nearly five
centuries, covering that dreary twilight known as the Dark Ages--a time
when, had it not been for the Christian Church and for the torch of the
Saracen in Spain, the light of civilization would really have been
extinguished, and the slender thread of connection with a great past
have been broken.