[A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot]@TWC D-Link book
A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times

CHAPTER III
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He had a great sacrifice prepared.

The soldiers, crowned with laurel, were ranged about the pyre; their general, holding on high a blazing torch, was about to apply the light with his own hand, when suddenly, on the very spot, whether by design or accident, came from Rome the news that Marius had just been for the fifth time elected consul.

In the midst of acclamations from his army, and with a fresh chaplet bound upon his brow, he applied the torch in person, and completed the sacrifice.
Were we travelling in Provence, in the neighborhood of Aix, we should encounter, peradventure, some peasant who, whilst pointing out to us the summit of a lull whereon, in all probability, Marius offered, nineteen hundred and forty years ago, that glorious sacrifice, would say to us in his native dialect, "Aqui es lou deloubre do la Vittoria:" "There is the temple of victory." There, indeed, was built, not far from a pyramid erected in honor of Marius, a little temple dedicated to Victory.
Thither, every year, in the month of May, the population used to come and celebrate a festival and light a bonfire, answered by other bonfires on the neighboring heights.

When Gaul became Christian, neither monument nor festival perished; a saint took the place of the goddess, and the temple of Victory became the church of St.Victoire.

There are still ruins of it to this day; the religious procession which succeeded the pagan festival ceased only at the first outburst of the Revolution; and the vague memory of a great national event still mingles in popular tradition with the legends of the saint.
The Ambrons and Teutons beaten, there remained the Kymrians, who, according to agreement, had repassed the Helvetic Alps and entered Italy on the north-east, by way of the Adige.


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