, i. 177. See
Mezeray.]

[Footnote 27: Under the Merovingian race, the throne was hereditary;
but all the sons of the deceased monarch were equally entitled to their
share of his treasures and territories. See the Dissertations of M.
de Foncemagne, in the sixth and eighth volumes of the Memoires de
l'Academie.]

Chapter XXXV: Invasion By Attila.--Part II.

When Attila declared his resolution of supporting the cause of his
allies, the Vandals and the Franks, at the same time, and almost in the
spirit of romantic chivalry, the savage monarch professed himself
the lover and the champion of the princess Honoria. The sister of
Valentinian was educated in the palace of Ravenna; and as her marriage
might be productive of some danger to the state, she was raised, by the
title of Augusta, [28] above the hopes of the most presumptuous subject.
But the fair Honoria had no sooner attained the sixteenth year of her
age, than she detested the importunate greatness which must forever
exclude her from the comforts of honorable love; in the midst of vain
and unsatisfactory pomp, Honoria sighed, yielded to the impulse of
nature, and threw herself into the arms of her chamberlain Eugenius. Her
guilt and shame (such is the absurd language of imperious man) were soon
betrayed by the appearances of pregnancy; but the disgrace of the royal
family was published to the world by the imprudence of the empress
Placidia who dismissed her daughter, after a strict and shameful
confinement, to a remote exile at Constantinople. The unhappy princess
passed twelve or fourteen years in the irksome society of the sisters
of Theodosius, and their chosen virgins; to whose crown Honoria could
no longer aspire, and whose monastic assiduity of prayer, fasting, and
vigils, she reluctantly imitated. Her impatience of long and hopeless
celibacy urged her to embrace a strange and desperate resolution. The
name of Attila was familiar and formidable at Constantinople; and his
frequent embassies entertained a perpetual intercourse between his camp
and the Imperial palace. In the pursuit of love, or rather of revenge,
the daughter of Placidia sacrificed every duty and every prejudice; and
offered to deliver her person into the arms of a Barbarian, of whose
language she was ignorant, whose figure was scarcely human, and whose
religion and manners she abhorred. By the ministry of a faithful eunuch,
she transmitted to Attila a ring, the pledge of her affection; a