About This Book
"I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my shears, All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years. Only I cut on the timber, only I carved on the stone: 'After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known!'" Rudyard Kipling, "The Palace." At the age of three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Oxford, set himself to write a history of the Third French Republic. When I made his acquaintance some thirty years later he had satisfactorily concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kingship. At his death, three months ago, I understand that his notes on the precursors of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired. "It is so difficult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh," he used to say, as I picked my steps through the litter of notebooks that cumbered his tables, chairs and floor.
