But those acts were temperate and wise; and they paved the way for the future without anticipating it.

Hugh Capet confined himself carefully to the sphere of his recognized rights as well as of his effective strength, and his government remained faithful to the character of the revolution which had raised him to the throne, at the same time that it gave warning of the future progress of royalty independently of and over the head of feudalism.

When he died, on the 24th of October, 996, the crown, which he hesitated, they say, to wear on his own head, passed without obstacle to his son Robert, and the course which was to be followed for eight centuries, under the government of his descendants, by civilization in France, began to develop itself.
[Illustration: "Who made thee King ?"----302] It has already been pointed out, in the case of Adalberon, archbishop of Rheims, what part was taken by the clergy in this second change of dynasty; but the part played by it was so important and novel that we must make a somewhat more detailed acquaintance with the real character of it and the principal actor in it.

When, in 751, Pepin the Short became king in the place of the last Merovingian, it was, as we have seen, Pope Zachary who decided that "it was better to give the title of king to him who really exercised the sovereign power than to him who bore only its name." Three years later, in 754, it was Pope Stephen II.

who came over to France to anoint King Pepin, and, forty-six years afterwards, in 800, it was Pope Leo III.