Loyalty to the royal family led to the restoration of the Carlovingian line after the death of Eudes. Charles, called the Simple, a youth of nineteen, was set upon the throne and found himself faced at once by the problem of crushing or checking the perpetual invasion. When no solution had been found after thirteen years the king attempted conciliation. He offered Rollo his daughter in marriage and a considerable piece of territory provided that the rover should acknowledge himself Charles’s vassal and should become a Christian. Rollo considered this proposition for a period of three months and then consented to parley with the king over details. They went with their followers to a town not far from Paris where they ranged themselves on opposite sides of a stream and communicated by messenger. Rollo seems to have made no difficulty on the subject of his bride or of his religion, but he was fastidious as to the land he should receive. No one knew better than he the character and condition of northern France, and he rejected one proposed section after another on the plea of its being too swampy or too close to the sea or--brazenly enough--too seriously hurt by the harrying of the Northmen! When at last he deigned to accept what came to be called Normandy a further difficulty arose because he refused to acknowledge his vassalship by kneeling before the king and kissing his foot. He had never bent the knee to any one, he said, and he never would. He was willing to do it vicariously, however, and he directed one of his followers to offer the feudal salute. But his proxy had been trained in the same school. Stooping suddenly he seized Charles’s foot and raised it to his lips, oversetting the king and provoking bursts of laughter from the Northmen and of indignation from the Franks. Charles found it prudent to swallow his rage and he was rewarded by gaining an admirable colony. The Northmen or Normans became excellent settlers and their coming invigorated a people whose feeble monarchs had represented only too well their own characteristics. It was largely through this vigorous northern influence that, when a break occurred in the Carlovingian line, Hugh Capet, duke of France and count of Paris, a descendant of Eudes’ brother Robert, was elevated (987) by the barons to the throne which his descendants in the direct line occupied for some three hundred years. The family never has died out. Louis XVI in prison was called “Citizen Capet;” the duke of Orleans, pretender to the non-existent French throne, is a twentieth century representative. The tenth century found Paris reduced to practically its size when Cæsar sent Labienus to attack it. The Northmen had destroyed the _faubourgs_ on the once flourishing left bank, and it was only by degrees that the abbeys of Sainte Geneviève and of Saint Germain-des-Prés replaced their buildings to meet the needs of the population slowly growing around them once more.