Lutetia, the ancient Paris, or Lutetia Parisiorum, as it was called by the Romans, stood in the midst of marshes. The name, derived, suggestively enough, from _lutum_, the Latin for mud, has been invested with a peculiar significance by those stern moralists who see in Paris nothing but a sink of iniquity. Balzac called it a "wen"; and Blucher, when some ferocious member of his staff suggested the destruction of Paris, exclaimed: "Leave it alone; Paris will destroy all France!" By a critic of less severe temperament Paris has been contemptuously described as "the tavern of Europe"--_le cabaret de l'Europe_. Lutetia, however, can afford to smile alike at the slurs of moralists and the sneers of cynics; and the etymology of her name need by no means alarm those of her admirers who will reflect that lilies may spring from mud, and that the richest corn is produced from the blackest soil. The development of the Lutetia of Cæsar's time into the Paris of our own has occupied many eventful centuries; and the centre of the development may still be seen in that little island of the so-called City--_l'Ile de la Cité_--once known as the Island of Lutetia. As to the dimensions of the ancient Lutetia, neither historians nor geographers are wholly agreed. The germ of Paris is, in any case, to be found in that part of the French capital which has long been known as _la Cité_, and which is the dullest and sleepiest part of Paris, just as inversely our "city," distinctively so called, is the most active and energetic part of London. The Parisians have always been given to insurrection; and their first rising was made against a ruler who was likely enough to put it down--Julius Cæsar, that is to say. Finding his power defied, Cæsar sent against the Parisians a body of troops, under the command of Labienus, who crushed the rebels in the first battle. Historians give different versions of the engagement, but modern writers are content for the most part to rely on a tradition related by an author of the fourteenth century, Raoul de Presles, who published a French version of Cæsar's account of the Battle of Paris, enriched by notes and comments from his own pen. Labienus, according to Cæsar and Raoul de Presles, was arrested in his first attack by an impassable marsh. Then, simulating a retreat along the left bank of the Seine, he was pursued by the Gauls, in spite of Camulogenes, their cautious leader; who, unable to restrain them, fell with them at last into an ambuscade, in which chief and followers all perished.