ll this save what the lots shall truly give thee." At these words
all were astounded; but the king bore the insult with sweet patience,
and, accepting the vase, he gave it to the messenger, hiding his wound in
the recesses of his heart. At the end of a year he ordered all his host
to assemble fully equipped at the March parade, to have their arms
inspected. After having passed in review all the other warriors, he came
to him who had struck the vase. "None," said he, "hath brought hither
arms so ill kept as thine; nor lance, nor sword, nor battle-axe are in
condition for service." And wresting from him his axe he flung it on the
ground. The man stooped down a little to pick it up, and forthwith the
king, raising with both hands his own battle-axe, drove it into his
skull, saying, "Thus didst thou to the vase of Soissons!" On the death of
this fellow he bade the rest begone; and by this act made himself greatly
feared.

[Illustration: "Thus didst thou to the Vase of Soissons."----139]

A bold and unexpected deed has always a great effect on men: with his
Frankish warriors, as well as with his Roman and Gothic foes, Clovis had
at command the instincts of patience and brutality in turn: he could bear
a mortification and take vengeance in due season. Whilst prosecuting his
course of plunder and war in Eastern Belgica, on the banks of the Meuse,
Clovis was inspired with a wish to get married. He had heard tell of a
young girl, like himself of the Germanic royal line, Clotilde, niece of
Gondebaud, at that time king of the Burgundians. She was dubbed
beautiful, wise, and well-informed; but her situation was melancholy and
perilous. Ambition and fraternal hatred had devastated her family. Her
father, Chilperic, and her two brothers, had been put to death by her
uncle Gondebaud, who had caused her mother Agrippina to be thrown into
the Rhone, with a stone round her neck; and drowned. Two sisters alone
had survived this slaughter; the elder, Chrona, had taken religions vows,
the other, Clotilde, was living almost in exile at Geneva, absorbed in
works of piety and charity. The principal historian of this epoch,
Gregory of Tours, an almost contemporary authority, for he was elected
bishop sixty-two years after the death of Clovis, says simply,

"Clovis at once sent a deputation to Gondebaud to ask Clotilde in
marriage. Gondebaud, not daring to refuse, put her into the hands of the
envoys, who took her promptly to the