For the contemporary historian, whether male, gray-haired and ensconced in the ivory tower of an old-fashioned political or intellectual history, or female, young, and happily dismantling the tower by the seige-machine of social history, Carolingian society is a source of continuing wonderment. For those with a love of order and of the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, Carolingian society especially in the years just preceding and following Louis the Pious's death in 840, mirrors all the anxieties of a committed band of representatives of high culture surrounded by the rising seas of low culture. For those riding the crests of the sea, Carolingian society speaks of the possibilities open in a society of little structure and much mobility to those of imagination, not tied to the past.