Modern liberties proceed from three different sources, from the union of three characters, three laws, three conquests--the Roman, the German, and the Christian. The combination of these three influences, which has made modern Europe, is found in a rather striking manner in the valley of the Leman. The three torrents from north, south, and east, whose union forms the great stream of civilisation, deposited in that valley which the Creator hollowed out between the Alps and the Jura that precious sediment whose component parts can easily be distinguished after so many ages. First we come upon the Roman element in Geneva. This city was for a long while part of the empire; ‘it was the remotest town of the Allobroges,’ says Cæsar.[9] About a league from Geneva there once stood an antique marble in honour of Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, who 122 years before Christ had triumphed over the people of this district;[10] and the great Julius himself, who constructed immense works round the city, bequeathed his name to a number of Roman colonists, or clients at least. More remarkable traces--their municipal institutions--are found in most of the cities which the Romans occupied; we may be permitted to believe that Geneva was not without them. In the fifth century the second element of modern liberties appeared with the Germans. The Burgundians--those Teutons of the Oder, the Vistula, and the Warta--being already converted to Christianity, poured their bands into the vast basin of the Rhone, and a spirit of independence, issuing from the distant forests of the north, breathed on the shores of the Leman lake. The Burgundian tribe, however, combined with the vigour of the other Germans a milder and more civilising temperament. King Gondebald built a palace at Geneva; an inscription placed fifteen feet above the gate of the castle, and which remains to this day, bears the words, _Gundebadus rex clementissimus_, &c.[11] From this castle departed the king’s niece, the famous Clotilda, who, by marrying Clovis, converted to Christianity the founder of the French monarchy. If the Franks then received the Christian faith from Geneva, many of their descendants in the days of Calvin received the Reformation from the same place. Clotilda’s uncle repaired the breaches in the city walls, and having assembled his ablest counsellors, drew up those Burgundian laws which defended small and great alike, and protected the life and honour of man against injury.[12] The first kingdom founded by the Burgundians did not, however, last long. In 534 it fell into the hands of the Merovingian kings, and the history of Geneva was absorbed in that of France until 888, the epoch when the second kingdom of Burgundy rose out of the ruins of the majestic but ephemeral empire of Charlemagne.