The president Hénault repeats, in his "Chronicle," what had been stated at random before him, that Clovis digested the Salic law in 511, the very year in which he died. I am very well disposed to believe that he actually did digest this law, and that he knew how to read and write, just as I am to believe that he was only fifteen years old when he undertook the conquest of the Gauls; but I do sincerely wish that any one would show me in the library of St.-Germain-des-Prés, or of St. Martin, the original document of the Salic law actually signed Clovis, or Clodovic, or Hildovic; from that we should at least learn his real name, which nobody at present knows. We have two editions of this Salic law; one by a person by the name of Herold, the other by Francis Pithou; and these are different, which is by no means a favorable presumption. When the text of a law is given differently in two documents, it is not only evident that one of the two is false, but it is highly probable that they are both so. No custom or usage of the Franks was written in our early times, and it would be excessively strange that the law of the Salii should have been so. This law, moreover, is in Latin, and it does not seem at all probable that, in the swamps between Suabia and Batavia, Clovis, or his predecessors, should speak Latin. It is supposed that this law has reference to the kings of France; and yet all the learned are agreed that the Sicambri, the Franks, and the Salii, had no kings, nor indeed any hereditary chiefs. The title of the Salic law begins with these words: "_In Christi nomine_"--"In the name of Christ." It was therefore made out of the Salic territory, as Christ was no more known by these barbarians than by the rest of Germany and all the countries of the North. This law is stated to have been drawn up by four distinguished lawyers of the Frank nation; these, in Herold's edition, are called Vuisogast, Arogast, Salegast, and Vuindogast. In Pithou's edition, the names are somewhat different. It has been unluckily discovered that these names are the old names, somewhat disguised, of certain cantons of Germany. In whatever period this law was framed in bad Latin, we find, in the article relating to allodial or freehold lands, "that no part of Salic land can be inherited by women." It is clear that this pretended law was by no means followed. In the first place, it appears from the formulæ of Marculphus that a father might leave his allodial land to his daughter, renouncing "a certain Salic law which is impious and abominable." Secondly, if this law be applied to fiefs, it is evident that the English kings, who were not of the Norman race, obtained all their great fiefs in France only through daughters.