a pair of
shears. Unshorn locks were essential as a mark of the kingly race among
the Franks; the messenger said therefore: "Most glorious queen, thy
sons, our masters, desire to know thy will touching these children; wilt
thou that they live with shorn hair or that they be put to death?"
Clotilde, in her astonishment and despair, answered: "If they be not set
upon the throne, I would rather know that they were dead than shorn."
The messenger hastened back to the two kings and, with fatal and wilful
inaccuracy, said: "Finish ye your work, for the queen favoring your
plans, willeth that ye accomplish them." Forthwith the two children were
murdered in the most cold-blooded fashion. The tale is rendered the more
shocking by the addition of the fact that Guntheuque, the mother of the
lads, had become the wife of that uncle who killed them.

The Merovingians allowed themselves as much license in love as they did
freedom from restraint in regard to the sterner passions. Nominal
Christians though they were, they felt no compunction of conscience as
to polygamy, when the vagaries of their fancy could be satisfied only by
its practice. Gregory of Tours records how: "King Clotaire I. had to
wife Ingonde, and her only did he love, when she made to him the
following request: 'My lord,' said she, 'hath made of his handmaid what
seemeth to him good; and now, to crown his favors, let my lord deign to
hear what his handmaid demandeth. I pray you be graciously pleased to
find for my sister Aregonde, your slave, a man both capable and rich, so
that I be rather exalted than abased thereby, and be enabled to serve
you still more faithfully.' At these words, Clotaire, who was but too
voluptuously disposed by nature, conceived a fancy for Aregonde, betook
himself to the country house where she dwelt, and united her to him in
marriage. When the union had taken place, he returned to Ingonde, and
said to her, 'I have labored to procure for thee the favor thou didst so
sweetly demand, and, on looking for a man of wealth and capability
worthy to be united to thy sister, I could find none better than myself:
know, therefore, that I have taken her to wife, and I trow that it will
not displease thee.' 'What seemeth good in my master's eyes, that let
him,' replied Ingonde; 'only let thy servant abide still in the king's
grace.'"

From the above, it is noticeable that a servile manner of speech to
their husbands was customary to the Frankish women of