as in the year 568 that Alboin, followed by the great multitude of
adventurers he had gathered, and by the whole nation of the Longobardi,
ascended the Julian Alps, and looked down from their summits on the
smiling plains of northern Italy to which his success was thenceforward
to give the name of Lombardy, the land of the Longobardi.

Four years were spent in war with the Romans, city after city, district
after district, falling into the hands of the invaders. The resistance
was but feeble, and at length the whole country watered by the Po, with
the strong city of Pavia, fell into the hands of Alboin, who divided the
conquered lands among his followers, and reduced their former holders to
servitude. Alboin made Pavia his capital, and erected strong
fortifications to keep out the Burgundians, Franks, and other nations
which were troubling his new-gained dominions. This done, he settled
down to the enjoyment of the conquest which he had so ably made and so
skilfully defended.

History tells us that the Longobardi cultivated their new lands so
skilfully that all traces of devastation soon vanished, and the realm
grew rich in its productions. Their freemen distinguished themselves
from the other German conquerors by laboring to turn the waste and
desert tracts into arable soil, while their king, though unceasingly
watchful against his enemies, lived among his people with patriarchal
simplicity, procuring his supplies from the produce of his farms, and
making regular rounds of inspection from one to another. It is a picture
fitted for a more peaceful and primitive age than that turbulent period
in which it is set.

But now we have to do with Alboin in another aspect,--his domestic
relations, his dealings with his wife Rosamond, and the tragic end of
all the actors in the drama of real life which we have set out to tell.
The Longobardi were barbarians, and Alboin was no better than his
people; a strong evidence of which is the fact that he had the skull of
Cunimund, his defeated enemy and the father of his wife, set in gold,
and used it as a drinking cup at his banquets.

Doubtless this brutality stirred revengeful sentiments in the mind of
Rosamond. An added instance of barbarian insult converted her outraged
feelings into a passion for revenge. Alboin had erected a palace near
Verona, one of the cities of his new dominion, and here he celebrated
his victories with a grand feast to his companions in arms. Wine flowed
fr