But uniquely characteristic as are these Gruyere people, the history of their country is still more extraordinary. Almost negligible in wealth or population, the little mountain province, lying midway between France, Austria, and Savoy, held in the days of its prosperity an almost unexplainably important position beside the great monarchies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Midway also between the Berne and Fribourg republics, the Gruyere counts held something very nearly approaching a balance of power between Savoy and the Confederates. Feudal by race and by the independence of their little principality, they were so trusted by the Confederates and so powerful with Savoy, that they repeatedly acted as arbitrators in their mutual quarrels, and by this high influence were sharers and at times framers of the treaties with the neighboring kingdoms, and admitted to the diplomatic councils of Europe. They were not only valorous in the defence of their country but by the Latin charm of their race were adored by their subjects, and held in great favor by the dukes of Savoy, themselves allied by many inter-marriages with all the crowns of Europe. So important was the little Gruyere to the French kings and the emperors of Germany that, as has been related, they occupied themselves with its internal affairs, attempting to intervene in such matters as runaway marriages and the rival claims for succession. But the attitude of its rulers towards royal and imperial mandates was so independent, their maintenance of their feudal sovereignty was so tenacious that they preserved the high and happy ideals of their house, and were the last of the Swiss nobles to yield to the march of democracy. Their long rule, extending through six centuries of internal wars, during times when oppression was the prerogative of their order, was stained by no single act of cruelty. In the peculiar charm of their race, in the unique influence of their position in Europe, as in the unbroken length of their rule, the counts of Gruyere were the most important of all the noble Swiss families. Titles and aristocratic privileges have long since vanished from republican Switzerland, where liberty triumphant, the age-wrought jewel of a thousand years, shines clearly among the tumults of the warring nations. But remote among its mountains, a cherished place of pilgrimage and refreshment, the little feudal city still crowns its green hill, and in the Gruyere people the Celtic soul, undying fresh and free, still sings in their love songs and war songs, still speaks in their legends and tales of its birth in the morning of time. APPENDIX The traditions of Romand Helvetia have preserved the memory of the establishment of Vandal or Burgundian hordes in that part of Gaul.