d of her daughter Gerberga on the throne. Boccaccio, by making
Theodelinda the subject of one of his amorous tales, has taken an
unwarranted and reprehensible liberty with a good queen of whom her age
was justly proud.

It is to these times, also, that the pathetic story of Saint Genevieve
belongs. She was the wife of Count Siegfried of Andernach. He, setting
out against the Moors who were then invading the land, intrusted her to
the care of Golo, his principal servant. This man, having failed in his
repeated attempts on her conjugal faithfulness, accused her of the fault
which he would fain have persuaded her to commit, and procured her
condemnation to death. Her executioners being merciful, spared her life
by having her conveyed far into the recesses of a forest. There she,
with her little daughter, lived for several years in absolute solitude.
They were sheltered by a cave; and a doe, whose tameness was regarded as
a miraculous providence, supplied them with milk. It was no less
regarded as a divine interposition which eventually led Siegfried to the
grotto while following the chase; her innocence being proved, she was
happily reinstated as his wife, and has ever since been honored as a
saint, which doubtless she was.

Christianity, during the latter half of the first millennium, could show
triumphs of sanctification in personal character; it had its heroes of
morality, but it must be confessed that the conversion of the barbaric
nations was not accompanied with a very signal improvement in their
morals. Milman says: "It is difficult to conceive a more dark and odious
state of society than that of France under her Merovingian kings, the
descendants of Clovis, as described by Gregory of Tours. In the conflict
or coalition of barbarism with Roman Christianity, barbarism has
introduced into Christianity all its ferocity, with none of its
generosity or magnanimity; its energy shows itself in atrocity of
cruelty and even of sensuality. Christianity has given to barbarism
hardly more than its superstition and its hatred of heretics and
unbelievers. Throughout, assassinations, parricides, and fratricides
intermingle with adulteries and rapes....

"As to the intercourse of the sexes, wars of conquest where the females
are at the mercy of the victors, especially if female virtue is not in
much respect, would severely try the more rigid morals of the conqueror.
The strength of the Teutonic character, when it had once burst t