a couple of scenes from the history of Paris

There are many such scenes, of course, but two in particular tend to stick with me:

*Gibbon’s description of how the Right Bank was thickly forested during the Roman Era. That’s something to imagine.

*From a different book, the image of a Viking strike force coming up the Seine. Warning came up the river, and what is now called the Île de la cité went into the medieval equivalent of lockdown. But a heavy fog descended over the island. Through the fog the outlines of the Viking longboats could be discerned, and the boats simply turned and left, never to return. Were the Vikings afraid to attack Paris in the fog, or did they simply never see it? I don’t remember the exact year when this occurred.

Now I remember that the Viking story came from THIS BOOK by Alistair Horne, which was a very nice read.