“Paris did not, like London, simply grow into the capital of a kingdom already existing. The city created first the county and then the kingdom, of which it was successively the head.” In those days Paris ranked no higher than Soissons, Sens, Lâon, Orléans, or Rouen; and in ecclesiastical dignity it was inferior to some of them, being, it is true, an episcopal see, but not a metropolitan. Certainly, as we have seen, it was approved as a military station by Cæsar, and beloved as a residence by Julian; and the great position the city now holds in modern Europe and the modern world is rather apt to bias our estimate of these early honours, which were undoubtedly shared by many other of the Gallic cities. Because Paris is now a metropolitan see, the centre of political and social France, we have a tendency to think that in all times the city must have ruled her neighbour towns in this way; whereas it was only by very slow degrees--long after it had become the seat of royalty and the nominal capital of France--that Paris acquired an influence beyond the bounds of her own territories. The great lords of Burgundy, of Aquitaine, of Anjou, of Champagne--they were vassals to the king, they paid him homage, they gave him their military service, but they and their domains formed no part of France; they were almost as separate from any head or centre as were the wide-scattered Teutonic states east of the Rhine. Nor was this felt to be in any way a disadvantage; the kings in Paris would doubtless have welcomed the firm allegiance of these kings in all but name, because it would have meant a fresh access of power, an added strength wherewith to face their other foes; but no idea of national unity had any place in their calculation. Paris had made for herself a dominion, and the time was to come when that dominion should stretch from the sea on the north, south and west, to the river and to the mountains on the east; but as yet that time had not arrived. [Illustration: THE PONT MARIE, PARIS]