“Without any delay the council was assembled at Chalons, and preparations made for the nuptials.  The Franks, having arrived with all speed, received her from the hands of Gondebaud, put her into a covered carriage, and escorted her to Clovis, together with much treasure.  She, however, having already learned that Aridius was on his way back, said to the Frankish lords, ’If ye would take me into the presence of your lord, let me descend from this carriage, mount me on horseback, and get you hence as fast as ye may; for never in this carriage shall I reach the presence of your lord.’

“Aridius, in fact, returned very speedily from Marseilles, and Gondebaud, on seeing him, said to him, ’Thou knowest that we have made friends with the Franks, and that I have given my niece to Clovis to wife.’  ‘This,’ answered Aridius, ’is no bond of friendship, but the beginning of perpetual strife.  Thou shouldst have remembered, my lord, that thou didst slay Clotilde’s father, thy brother Chilperic, that thou didst drown her mother, and that thou didst cut off her brothers’ heads and cast their bodies into a well.  If Clotilde become powerful she will avenge the wrongs of her relatives.  Send thou forthwith a troop in chase, and have her brought back to thee.  It will be easier for thee to bear the wrath of one person than to be perpetually at strife, thyself and thine, with all the Franks.’  And Gondebaud did send forthwith a troop in chase to fetch back Clotilde with the carriage and all the treasure; but she, on approaching Villers, where Clovis was waiting for her, in the territory of the Troyes, and before passing the Burgundian frontier, urged them who escorted her to disperse right and left over a space of twelve leagues in the country whence she was departing, to plunder and burn; and that having been done with the permission of Clovis, she cried aloud, ’I thank thee, God omnipotent, for that I see the commencement of vengeance for my parents and my brethren!’”

The majority of the learned have regarded this account of Fredegaire as a romantic fable, and have declined to give it a place in history.  M. Fauriel, one of the most learned associates of the Academy of Inscriptions, has given much the same opinion, but he nevertheless adds:  “Whatever may be their authorship, the fables in question are historic in the sense that they relate to real facts of which they are a poetical expression, a romantic development, conceived with the idea of popularizing the Frankish kings among the Gallo-Roman subjects.”  It cannot, however, be admitted that a desire to popularize the Frankish kings is a sufficient and truth-like explanation of these tales of the Gallo-Roman chroniclers, or that they are no more than “a poetical expression, a romantic development” of the real facts briefly noted by Gregory of Tours; the tales have a graver origin and contain more truth than would be presumed from some of the anecdotes and sayings mixed up with them.  In the condition of minds and parties in