The bridges at Albi and Espalion have caused some men to break old friendships over a simple question, namely: “When were pointed arches used for the first time in French bridges? At what date were they brought from the East?” As the pointed arch was copied by Europeans, not invented by them, the precise date of the mimicry ought not to excite a pontist; it is a thing for antiquaries to be flurried about. If the question ran in another form: “Was the pointed arch in French bridges an independent discovery?” then a battle and some exploded reputations would be worth while. But no such hypothesis has been put forward by either side in a warm dispute. One party declares that as early as the time of Charlemagne, towards the end of the eighth century, or the beginning of the ninth (768-814), a French builder seems to have played the part of the sedulous ape to Eastern architecture, cribbing the pointed arch, and using it without much skill in the bridge of Espalion, whose construction (as documents prove incontestably) was ordered by Charlemagne himself. In this bald statement there is no challenge, no provocation; it is nothing more than a conjecture supported by a documented fact. If Charlemagne had been a weak ruler, like Louis the Indolent, it would be fair to suppose that his commands were neglected more often than obeyed; then we could not accept his character as a fact of greater value in a controversy than a command of his mentioned in authentic documents. Let us say that the Black Prince or his father ordered a bridge to be built at a given place; we have documents to prove this, and at the place named in the documents a very old bridge is extant. Should we not read these documents by the light of the reputation won by the Black Prince or by his father? Myself, I should say at once, “His orders were obeyed.” And so, too, in the case of Charlemagne. I accept his character as a guarantee that he was obeyed at Espalion; and in this I am supported by Charlemagne’s general attitude to roads and bridges. It was he who made many an effort to keep the highways in repair, trying to rescue them from the great disorder into which their administration had been thrown by the decline and fall of the Romans. He created the right to exact tolls, and sanctioned on the roads the use of statute labour and of fatigue duty done by soldiers. During his reign of forty-six years he restored much Roman work and set in movement a system that did not overtax the poor finances of his Empire; but after his death the Empire was divided and continual wars put an end to civil advancement.