tons, styles for writing, pins, needles, combs, and pottery. By
such pitiful trifles that have survived the pride and strength of all
their owners, you may be fitly introduced to the next chapter in the
pageant of historic Rouen, the tale of Fredegond and Brunhilda.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III

_Merovingian Rouen_

"Consurgit pater in filium, filius in patrem, frater in
fratrem, proximus in propinquum."

Literally not one stone remains in Rouen to which I can point you as a
witness of the tragedy in which the names of Fredegond and Brunhilda
will always live. Yet the part of their tragedy which was played in
Rouen must be told, if you are clearly to fashion for yourself that
web of many faded colours which is to be the background for the first
figures recognisable as flesh and blood, the northern pirates. It is a
story which points as clearly to the downfall of Merovingian society
and the coming of a new race, as ever any tale of Rome's decline and
fall pointed to the coming of the barbarians.

After the death of King Hlothair, the last man of the blood of the
great Hlodowig, or Clovis, whose Frankish warriors had driven the
Romans out of Gaul, and who himself became the "eldest son of the
Church," his kingdom had been divided among his four sons, of whom the
eldest died in possession of the lands of Bordeaux; and left his
treasure to be taken by the next brother, Gunthram, and his lands to
be divided among all three of the surviving heirs. Mutual suspicion
defeated its own ends, and the ridiculous principles on which the
division was made were the mainspring of nearly all the quarrelling
that followed. Sigebert, the youngest brother, reigned over Austrasia,
which stretched eastward from the north of Gaul through Germany
towards the Slavs and Saxons. Gunthram had the central land of Orleans
and Burgundy. Hilperik reigned north and westward of the Loire in
Neustria. But each of the three owned towns and lands in various parts
of France without regard to the broad lines of division which have
just been indicated. Of them all Hilperik, the King of Neustria, was
the most uxorious and effeminate. By his wife, Audowere, he had had
three sons, Hlodowig, Theodobert and Merowig, who was held at the font
of Rouen Cathedral by the Bishop Pretextatus. Among the royal waiting
women was a young and very beautiful Frank called Fredegond, on whom
the King had already cast a too-favourable eye; and the opportun