returned home with his hand full of hair, delighted at the flattering reception he had met with at the court of the Frankish king.  Durinig the Merovingian period, the greatest insult that could be offered to a freeman was to touch him with a razor or scissors.  The degradation of kings and princes was carried out in a public manner by shaving their heads and sending them into a monastery; on their regaining their rights and their authority, their hair was always allowed to grow again.  We may also conclude that great importance was attached to the preservation of the hair even under the kings of the second dynasty, for Charlemagne, in his Capitulaires, orders the hair to be removed as a punishment in certain crimes.

The Franks, faithful to their ancient custom of wearing the hair long, gradually gave up shaving the face.  At first, they only left a small tuft on the chin, but by degrees they allowed this to increase, and in the sixth and seventh centuries freemen adopted the usual form of beard.  Amongst the clergy, the custom prevailed of shaving the crown of the head, in the same way as that adopted by certain monastic orders in the present day.  Priests for a long time wore beards, but ceased to do so on their becoming fashionable amongst the laity (Figs. 406, 407).  Painters and sculptors therefore commit a serious error in representing the prelates and monks of those times with large beards.

As far as the monumental relics of those remote times allow us to judge, the dress as worn by Clovis underwent but trifing modifications during the first dvnasty; but during the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne considerable changes were effected, which resulted from the intercourse, either of a friendly or hostile nature, between the Franks and the southern nations.  About this time, silk stuffs were introduced into the kingdom, and the upper classes, in order to distinguish themselves from the lower, had their garments trimmed round with costly furs (see chapter on Commerce).

[Illustration:  Fig. 406 and 407.—­Costume of the Prelates from the Eighth to the Tenth Centuries—­After Miniatures in the “Missal of St. Gregory,” in the National Library of Paris.]

We have before stated (see chapter on Private Life) that Charlemagne, who always was very simple in his tastes, strenuously set his face against these novel introductions of luxury, which he looked upon as tending to do harm.  “Of what use are these cloaks?” he said; “in bed they cannot cover us, on horseback they can neither protect us from the rain nor the wind, and when we are sitting they can neither preserve our legs from the cold nor the damp.”  He himself generally wore a large tunic made of otters’ skins.  On one occasion his courtiers went out hunting with him, clothed in splendid garments of southern fashion, which became much torn by the briars, and begrimed with the blood of the animals they had killed.  “Oh, ye foolish men!” he said to them the next day as he showed them his own