that time. It is
possible that it was little more than an affectation. Doubtless the
women of character and strength then, as ever, were not without means of
holding their own. Chilperic, the King of Soissons, who was a son of
Clotaire, added to the not brief list of his wives--we may give him the
benefit of the doubt as to whether they were
contemporaneous--Galsuinthe, daughter of the King of Spain. Her
attractiveness consisted in no small measure of the wealth she brought
him. But he became enamored of Fredegonde. Galsuinthe could not brook
this, and she offered to willingly relinquish her dowry if he would send
her back to her father. Chilperic adopted a solution of the difficulty
that was more to his mind. The queen was found dead in her bed. She had
been strangled by a slave. Chilperic mourned for a season which was more
remarkable for its brevity than his sorrow was marked by its intensity,
and then took Fredegonde for his wife. This queen exerted an influence
upon the affairs of her time, both political and ecclesiastical. In her
life and character was fully illustrated that strong mixture of
viciousness and affected piety which occasions such a sad commentary on
the Christianity of her time. She was the daughter of peasants, and owed
her rise solely to her beauty and her mental gifts. Her numerous murders
included her stepson, a king, and the Archbishop of Rouen. How much
regard she entertained for her own personal chastity may be judged from
the fact that she took a public oath, with three bishops and four
hundred nobles as her vouchers, that her son was the true offspring of
her husband, Chilperic. Whether the value of this great mass of
testimony consisted in a personal denial of responsibility on the part
of all the men whose position and character might be prejudicial to
Chilperic's paternity is not made clear. And yet, despite all this, the
following pious act is recorded to her: her child was ill; "he was a
little brother, when his elder brother, Chlodebert, was attacked with
the same symptoms. His mother, Fredegonde, seeing him in danger of
death, and touched by tardy repentance, said to the king, 'Long hath
divine mercy borne with our misdeeds; it hath warned us by fevers and
other maladies, and we have not mended our ways, and now we are losing
our sons; now the tears of the poor, the lamentations of widows, and the
sighs of orphans are causing them to perish, and leaving us no hope of
laying by for an