The Benedictine foundation of Saint Denis, though it stands outside the walls of the city, in a suburb where the tangle of machinery and smoke of factories make strange surroundings for the peace of the cloister, must always claim a right to come within the story of France’s capital, since it is the last resting-place of France’s kings. The legends of Paris and its saints ascribe the original foundation of the abbey church to the following story, which has come to be very well known, concerning as it does the patron saint of France. Saint Denis, who, as we have seen, was the first to evangelise in the marshes of Lutetia, suffered martyrdom under the Valerian persecutions in the third century, in the city where his good work had begun; but after his head had been struck off, the body, instead of falling lifeless at once, rose up from the block, took the head in its hands, and walked out of the city to the neighbouring town of Catulliacum, where it finally sought refuge in the villa of one Catulla, a Roman lady of noble and good repute, who instantly took possession of her sainted charge and gave him Christian burial within her garden. So far is legend; at any rate, a chapel was erected over the shrine, and became, of course, an object of pilgrimage for many years. Then comes the story of Dagobert, the rebellious young prince who sought sanctuary in the chapel against the wrath of his father; and, inspired by a vision of the saint, promised to build a church on the same site. Accordingly, on his accession to his father’s throne, the Abbey and Church of Saint Denis were founded in about 769. In the following century the Benedictine monks purchased their immunity from Norman invaders by large sums of money; but this contract seems to have availed them little, since the pirates, probably hoping for fresh plunder, despoiled the monastery as they had despoiled Saint-Germain-des-Prés. After this the foundation fell into a terrible state of neglect. Its abbots were fighting men--not necessarily ecclesiastics, for many nobles in those days held lay abbacies; Hugh Capet, for instance, was abbot of Saint Martin at Tours--and not until the day of the famous Suger did it recover anything like its ancient prestige. Suger was an old pupil of the Benedictines at Saint Denis, and a fellow-scholar there with the young prince Louis l’Eveillé, afterwards Louis VI., whose chief minister he became in later days. In the days of his prosperity the abbot devoted himself to restoring and beautifying the church, and left full instructions to be carried out by his successor, when death prevented him from finishing what had been so nobly begun. The work languished again, however, until the reign of Louis IX., when Eudes de Clément and Matthieu de Vendôme took up the plans once more, and completed the church very much as we now see it.