‘Chartres at that time’ (858) ‘had a large population and was the richest of the cities of Neustria. It was very famous by reason of the magnitude of its walls, the beauty of its buildings and its cultivation of the fine arts.[23] But there burst upon Neustria a Pagan race from across the seas, who came in their huge beaked boats, and baring the sword of their iniquity cruelly laid waste almost the whole country. They destroyed many seats of the holy and gave them over to the devouring flames: towns, when they took them, they razed to the ground, and the Christians they either slew or led into captivity and sold into everlasting bondage. So furious was the rage of the heathen that they rowed up the Seine ravaging the land on every side, and at length coming to the city of Chartres strove to take it, whilst they laid waste the surrounding territory and rendered it uninhabitable. The city thus cut off from support, and reduced by the loss of many citizens and the enfeeblement of others, was surprised by a night attack and taken. All the Christians were slaughtered like sheep. And the city, which had formerly endured unshaken a ten years’ siege by Julius Cæsar and had repelled the Roman and Argolic armies, for it was built of huge squared stones and strengthened by lofty towers, and was indeed on that account named The City of Stones, and it rejoiced in an abundance of aqueducts and subterranean ways by which it could be supplied with all provisions, was now permitted by Heaven to be burnt and utterly razed to the ground by a nation that knew not God. But the patience of God, which thus corrects the worldliness of His people in order that they may not perish hereafter, did not permit the cruelty of those barbarians to pass unavenged. For the Franks gathered from all sides and hastened to the spot where the enemy had left their boats upon the River _Diva_. There, meeting them as they returned laden with spoil, they fell upon them with so violent an onslaught that the Northmen went down before them as in autumn the leaves of the forest fall before the blasts of the north wind.’ So the good monk, with an indignant energy that is almost eloquent. The discerning reader will be able to separate in this story the wheat from the chaff. But the fact is certain that Hastings it was who took Chartres upon this occasion. He burnt the town and put to the sword the good Bishop Frotbold, with many of his followers who had sought refuge in Notre-Dame. The church itself, and the Abbeys of S. Père and S. Chéron, he gave to the flames. THE VEIL OF THE VIRGIN--THE CATHEDRAL TREASURY.