among the assembly answered:
"Glorious king, everything we see here is thine, and we ourselves are
submissive to thy commands. Do thou as seemeth good to thee, for there
is none that can resist thy power." When they had thus spoken, a certain
Frank, light-minded, jealous, and vain, cried out aloud as he struck the
vase with his battle-axe, "Thou shalt have naught of all this save what
the lots shall truly give thee." At these words all were astounded; but
the king bore the insult with sweet patience, and, accepting the vase,
he gave it to the messenger, hiding his wound in the recesses of his
heart. At the end of a year he ordered all his host to assemble fully
equipped at the March parade, to have their arms inspected. After having
passed in review all the other warriors, he came to him who had struck
the vase. "None," said he, "hath brought hither arms so ill-kept as
thine; nor lance, nor sword, nor battle-axe are in condition for
service." And wresting from him his axe he flung it on the ground. The
man stooped down a little to pick it up, and forthwith the King, raising
with both hands his own battle-axe, drove it into his skull, saying,
"Thus didst thou to the vase of Soissons!" On the death of this fellow
he bade the rest begone, and by this act made himself greatly feared.

A bold and unexpected deed has always a great effect on men: with his
Frankish warriors, as well as with his Roman and Gothic foes, Clovis had
at command the instincts of patience and brutality in turn; he could
bear a mortification and take vengeance in due season. While prosecuting
his course of plunder and war in Eastern Belgica, on the banks of the
Meuse, Clovis was inspired with a wish to get married. He had heard tell
of a young girl, like himself of the Germanic royal line, Clotilde,
niece of Gondebaud, at that time king of the Burgundians. She was dubbed
beautiful, wise, and well-informed; but her situation was melancholy and
perilous. Ambition and fraternal hatred had devastated her family. Her
father, Chilperic, and her two brothers, had been put to death by her
uncle Gondebaud, who had caused her mother, Agrippina, to be thrown into
the Rhone, with a stone round her neck, and drowned. Two sisters alone
had survived this slaughter: the elder, Chrona, had taken religious
vows; the other, Clotilde, was living almost in exile at Geneva,
absorbed in works of piety and charity.

The principal historian of this epoch, Gregory of Tours, an