to be faithless?’ At these words Childebert thrust away the child towards Clotaire, who seized him, plunged a hunting-knife in his side, as he had in his brother’s, and slew him.  They then put to death the slaves and governors of the children.  After these murders Clotaire mounted his horse and departed, taking little heed of his nephew’s death; and Childebert withdrew into the outskirts of the city.  Queen Clotilde had the corpses of the two children placed in a coffin, and followed them, with a great parade of chanting, and immense mourning, to the basilica of St. Pierre (now St. Genevieve), where they were buried together.  One was ten years old and the other seven.  The third, named Clodoald (who died about the year 560, after having founded, near Paris, a monastery called after him St. Cloud), could not be caught, and was saved by some gallant men.  He, disdaining a terrestrial kingdom, dedicated himself to the Lord, was shorn by his own hand, and became a church-man:  he devoted himself wholly to good works, and died a priest.  And the two kings divided equally between them the kingdom of Clodomir.” (Gregory of Tours, Histoire des Francs, III. xviii.)

[Illustration:  “Thrust him away, or thou diest in his stead.”——­160]

The history of the most barbarous peoples and times assuredly offers no example, in one and the same family, of an usurpation more perfidiously and atrociously consummated.  King Clodomir, the father of the two young princes thus dethroned and murdered by their uncles, had, during his reign, shown almost equal indifference and cruelty.  In 523, during a war which, in concert with his brothers Childebert and Clotaire, he had waged against Sigismund, king of Burgundy, he had made prisoners of that king, his wife, and their sons, and kept them shut up at Orleans.  The year after, the war was renewed with the Burgundians.  “Clodomir resolved,” says Gregory of Tours, “to put Sigismund to death.  The blessed Avitus, abbot of St. Mesrnin de Micy (an abbey about two leagues from Orleans), a famous priest in those days, said to him on this occasion, ’If, turning thy thoughts towards God, thou change thy plan, and suffer not these folk to be slain, God will be with thee, and thou wilt gain the victory; but if thou slay them, thou thyself wilt be delivered into the hands of thine enemies, and thou wilt undergo their fate; to thee and thy wife and thy sons will happen that which thou wilt have done to Sigismund and his wife and his sons.’  But Clodomir, taking no heed of this counsel, said, ’It were great folly to leave one enemy at home when I march out against another; one attacking me behind and another in front, I should find myself between two armies:  victory will be surer and easier if I separate one from the other; when the first is once dead, it will be less difficult to get rid of the other also.’  Accordingly he put Sigismund to death, together with his wife and his sons, ordered them to be thrown into