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Learning the reason of her haste, they did as requested, and mounted on one of their swiftest steeds, Clotilde swept onward to love and vengeance, leaving the lumbering carriage to follow with her female attendants at its slow will.

She was none too soon. Not long had she left her uncle’s court before Aridius reached it. Gondebaud, who had unbounded respect for and confidence in him, received him joyfully, and said, after their first greetings,–

“I have just completed a good stroke of policy. I have made friends with the Franks, and given my niece Clotilde to Clovis in marriage.”

“You have?” exclaimed Aridius, in surprise and alarm. “And you deem this a bond of friendship? To my poor wit, Gondebaud, it is a pledge of perpetual strife. Have you forgotten, my lord, that you killed Clotilde’s father and drowned her mother, and that you cut off the heads of her brothers and threw their bodies into a well? What think you this woman is made of? If she become powerful, will not revenge be her first and only thought? She is not far gone; if you are wise you will send at once a troop in swift pursuit, and bring her back. She is but one, the Franks are many. You will find it easier to bear the wrath of one person than for you and yours to be perpetually at war with all the Franks.”

Gondebaud saw the wisdom of these words, and lost no time in taking his councillor’s advice. A troop was sent, with orders to ride at all speed, and bring back Clotilde with the carriage and the treasure.

The carriage and the treasure they did bring back; but not Clotilde. She, with her escort, was already far away, riding in haste for the frontier of Burgundy. Clovis had advanced to meet her, and was awaiting at Villers, in the territory of Troyes, at no great distance from the border of Burgundy. But before reaching this frontier, Clotilde gave vent to revengeful passion, crying to her escort,–

“Ride right and left! Plunder and burn! Do what damage you may to this hated country from which Heaven has delivered me!”

Then, as they rode away on their mission of ruin, to which they had obtained permission from Clovis, she cried aloud,–

“I thank thee, God omnipotent, for that I see in this the beginning of the vengeance which I owe to my slaughtered parents and brethren!”

In no long time afterwards she joined Clovis, who received her with a lover’s joy, and in due season the marriage was celebrated, with all the pomp and ceremony of which those rude times were capable.

Thus ends the romantic story told us by the chronicler Fredegaire, somewhat too romantic to be accepted for veracious history, we fear. Yet it is interesting as a picture of the times, and has doubtless in it an element of fact–though it may have been colored by imagination. Aurelian and Aridius are historical personages, and what we know of them is in keeping with what is here told of them. So the reader may, if he will, accept the story as an interesting compound of reality and romance.

But there is more to tell. Clotilde had an important historical part to play, which is picturesquely described by the chronicler, Gregory of Tours. She was a Christian, Clovis a pagan; it was natural that she should desire to convert her husband, and through him turn the nation of the Franks into worshippers of Christ. She had a son, whom she wished to have baptized. She begged her husband to yield to her wishes.

“The gods you worship,” she said, “are of wood, stone, or metal. They are nought, and can do nought for you or themselves.”

“It is by command of our gods that all things are created,” answered Clovis. “It is plain that your God has no power. There is no proof that he is even of the race of gods.”