Constantius tried always to thwart him while he was there:  setting underlings over him with power to undo or prevent all he might attempt or do;—­how in spite of it all he fought the Germans, and drove them across the Rhine, and followed them up, and taught them new lessons in their own remote forests; and took the gorgeous Chnodomar, their king, prisoner; and sent for him, prepared to greet friendlily one so great in stature and splendid in bearing; but was disgusted when the gentleman, on coming into his presence, groveled on the floor and whined for his life,—­whereupon Julian, instead of treating him like a gentleman as he had intended, packed him off to his (Chnodomar’s) old ally the Maiden Aunt at Milan to see what they would make of each other;—­how he fought three campaigns victoriously beyond the Rhine; restored the desolated Cisrhenish No-man’s land, and brought in from Britain, in six hundred corn-ships, an amount Gibbon calculates at 120,000 quarters of wheat to feed its destitute population.—­And this fact is worth nothing:  if Britain could export all that wheat, it surface was not, as some folks hold, mainly under forest:  it was a well-cultivated country, you may depend, with agriculture in a very flourishing condition,—­as Gibbon does not fail to point out.

—­And you know, probably, how Julian loved his Paris, and governed Gaul thence in civil affairs in such a manner that Paris and Gaul loved him;—­how his own special legions, his pets, his Tenth, so to say, were the Celts and Petulants, and after these, the Herulians and Batavians (or shall I say Dutchmen?);—­how Constantius tried to deprive him of these, ordering him to send them off to him for wars with Sapor in the east;—­how Julian sorrowfully bade them go, judging well by Gallus his brother’s experience (whom Constantius had treated in the same way as a first step towards cutting off his head) what the next thing should be;—­but how they, (bless their Celtic and Petulant and Herulian and Dutch hearts!) told him very plainly that that kind of thing would not wash with them:  “Come!” said they; “no nonsense of this sort; be you our emperor, and condemn that old lady your cousin Constantius!—­or we kill you right now.”  Into his bed-room in Paris they poured by night with those terms,—­an ultimatum; whether or not with a twinkle in their eyes when they proposed the alternative, who can say?—­What was a young hero to do, whom the Gods had commissioned to strike the grand blow for them; and who never should strike it, that was certain, if Constantius should have leave to take away from him, first his Celts and Petulants, and then his head?  So he accepts; and writes kindly and respectfully to his Maiden Aunt—­ Spidership the Emperor telling him he must manage without the legions, and with a Co-Augustus to share the empire with him,—­ ruling (it was to be hoped in perfect harmony with himself) the west and leaving the east to Constantius.  However,