On the 16th of March 1711, some workmen, digging a tomb for the archbishop of Paris in the choir of Notre Dame, came upon the walls, six feet below the pavement, of the original Christian basilica over which the modern cathedral is built. In the fabric of these walls the early builders had incorporated the remains of the still earlier temple of Jupiter, which had been destroyed to give place to the Christian church, and among the _débris_ were found the fragments of an altar raised to Jove in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar by the _Nautæ_, a guild of Parisian merchant-shippers, an altar on whose foyer still remained some of the very burnt wood and incense used in the last pagan sacrifice. The mutilated stones, with their rude Gallo-Roman reliefs and inscriptions, may be seen in the Frigidarium of the Thermæ, the old Roman baths by the Hôtel de Cluny, and are among the most interesting of historical documents in Paris. The Corporation of _Nautæ_ who dedicated this altar to Jove, were the origin of the Commune or Civil Council of Paris, and in later time gave way to the provost[14] of the merchants and the sheriffs of that city. Their device was the _Nef_, or ship, which is and has been throughout the ages the arms of Paris, and which to this day may be seen carved on the vaultings of the Roman baths. In the great palace of which these baths formed but a part was enacted that scene so vividly described in the pages of Gibbon, when Julian, after his victories over the Alemanni and the Franks, was acclaimed Augustus by the rebellious troops of Constantius. On a plain outside Paris Julian had admonished the sullen legions, angry at being detached from their victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier, and had urged them to obedience. But at midnight the young Cæsar was awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized and carried in triumph through the streets to be enthroned and saluted as emperor. He was lifted on a shield, and for diadem, crowned with a military collar. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before his elevation to the imperial responsibilities and anxieties. He writes of the busy days and meditative nights he passed in his dear Lutetia, with its two wooden bridges, its pure and pleasant waters, its excellent wine. He dwells on the mildness of its climate, where the fig-tree, protected by straw in the winter, grew and fruited. One rigorous season, however, the emperor well remembered[15] when the Seine was blocked by huge masses of ice. Julian, who prided himself on his endurance, at first declined the use of those charcoal fires which to this day are a common and deadly method of supplying heat in Paris. But his rooms were damp and his servants were allowed to introduce them into his sleeping apartment. The Cæsar was almost asphyxiated by the fumes,