CHAPTER IV.
BRUNHILD AND FREDEGONDE.
At the monastery the banquet was in full swing. Convivial cordialitypresided over the celebration. At the table where Loysik, Ronan, theMaster of the Hounds and their respective families were seated, theconversation continued animated and lively. At this moment the subjectwas the atrocities that took place in the gloomy palace of QueenBrunhild. The happy inhabitants of the Valley listened to the horribleaccount with the greedy, uneasy and shuddering curiosity that is oftenfelt at night when, seated by a peaceful hearth, one hears someawe-inspiring history. Happy, humble and unknown, the listeners feelcertain they will never find themselves concerned in any adventure ofthe frightful nature of the one that causes them to shudder; they fearand yet they like to hear the end of the tale.
"In order to unravel the sanguinary tangle, and seeing that Brunhild,the present ruler of Burgundy, is the theme, let us first sum up thefacts in a few words. Clotaire died not long after he had his son Chram,together with the latter's wife and daughter, burned alive. That wasabout fifty-three years ago. Is it not so?" Ronan was saying.
"Yes, father," answered Gregory; "we are now in the year 613."
"Clotaire left four sons--Charibert reigned in Paris, Gontran was Kingof Orleans and Bourges, Sigebert was King of Austrasia and resided inMetz, and Chilperic was left King of Neustria, occupying the royalresidence of Soissons, our conquerors, as you know, having given thenames of Neustria and Austrasia to the provinces of the north and theeast of Gaul."
"Did you say Chilperic, father?" asked Ronan's son. "Chilperic, the Neroof Gaul, one of whose edicts closed with these words: 'Let whomsoeverrefuses obedience to this law have his eyes put out!'"
"Yes, we were speaking of him and of his brother Sigebert. Let us leavethe other two aside, seeing that both Charibert and Gontran diedchildless, the former in 566, the latter in 593. Although they bothshowed themselves worthy descendants of Clovis, they need not now occupyus."
"Father, the account that we wish to hear is that of Brunhild andFredegonde. These two names seem to be inseparable and are both steepedin blood--"
"I am coming to the history of these two monsters and of their twohusbands, Chilperic and Sigebert--the two she-wolves have each her wolf,and, what is still worse for Gaul, her whelps. Although married toAndowere, Chilperic had among his numerous concubines a Frankish femaleslave, a woman of dazzling beauty, and endowed, it is said, with anirresistible power of seduction. Her name was Fredegonde. He became sofascinated with her that, in order to enjoy the company of the slavewith utter freedom, he cast off his wife Andowere, who soon thereupondied, in a convent. But Chilperic presently tired of Fredegonde also,and, anxious to emulate his brother Sigebert, who married a princess ofroyal blood named Brunhild, the daughter of Athanagild, a King ofGermanic stock like the Franks, and whose ancestors conquered Spain asClovis did Gaul, he asked and obtained the hand of Brunhild's sister,Galeswinthe. It is said that nothing was comparable with the sweetnessof the face of this princess, while the goodness of her heart matchedthe angelic qualities of her face. When she was about to leave Spain tocome to Gaul and marry Chilperic, the unhappy soul had sad presentimentsof a speedy death. Nor did her presentiments deceive her. Six yearsafter her marriage she was smothered to death in her bed by her ownhusband."
"Like Wisigarde, the fourth wife of Neroweg, who was strangled to deathby that Frankish count, whose family still lives in Auvergne," remarkedGregory. "The Frankish kings and seigneurs all follow the same custom."
"Poor Galeswinthe! But why did her husband Chilperic indulge suchferocity toward her?"
"For the reason that the passion which once drew him to Fredegonde andwhich had cooled for a time, resumed the upper hand with him more hotlythan before. He put his second wife out of the way in order to marry theconcubine. Thus Fredegonde was married to Chilperic after the murder ofGaleswinthe, and became one of the queens of Gaul. At times oddcontrasts are seen in the same family. Galeswinthe was an angel, hersister Brunhild, married to Sigebert, was an infernal being. Ofexceptional beauty, gifted with an iron will, vindictive to the point offerocity, animated by an insatiable ambition, and endowed with anintelligence of such high grade that it would have equalled genius hadshe only not applied her extraordinary faculties to the blackestdeeds--Brunhild could not choose but create for herself a fame at whichthe world grows pale. She first set her cap to revenge Galeswinthe, whowas strangled to death by Chilperic at the instigation of Fredegonde. Afrightful feud broke out, accordingly, between the two women who nowwere mortal enemies, and each of whom reigned with her husband over apart of Gaul: poison, the assassin's dagger, conflagrations, civil war,wholesale butcheries, conflicts between fathers and sons, brothers andbrothers--such were the means that the two furies employed against eachother. The people of Gaul did not, of course, escape the devastatingstorm. The provinces that were subject to Sigebert and Brunhild werepitilessly ravaged by Chilperic, while the possessions of the latterwere in turn laid waste by Sigebert. Thus driven by the fury of theirwives, the two brothers fought each other until they were bothassassinated."
"Oh, if only Gallic blood did not have to flow in torrents, if onlythese frightful disasters did not heap fresh ills upon our unhappycountry, I would be ready to see in the conflict between those twowomen, who thus blasted the families that they joined, a positivepunishment sent down by heaven," observed Loysik. "But, alas, what ills,what frightful sufferings do not these royal hatreds afflict our ownpeople with!"
"And did the two female monsters ever find ready tools for theirvengeance?"
"The murders that they did not themselves commit with the aid of poison,they caused to be committed with the dagger. Fredegonde, whose depravitysurpassed Messalina's of old, surrounded herself with young pages; sheintoxicated them with unspeakable voluptuousness; she threw theirreasoning into disorder by means of philters that she herself concocted;by means of these she rendered them frenetic, and then she would hurlthem against the appointed victims. It was by such means that shecontrived the assassination of King Sigebert, Brunhild's husband, andthat she succeeded in poisoning their son Childebert. It was by suchmeans that she caused a large number of her enemies to be despatchedwith the dagger and, if the chronicles are to be trusted, her ownhusband Chilperic was numbered among her victims."
"So, then, that veritable fury spewed out of hell--Fredegonde--sparednot even her own husband?"
"Some historians, at least, lay his murder to her door; others charge itto Brunhild. Both theories may be correct; the one Queen, as well as theother, had an interest in putting Chilperic out of the way--Brunhild inorder to avenge her sister Galeswinthe, Fredegonde in order to escapethe punishment that she feared for the depravity of her life."
"And did punishment finally overtake the abominable woman?"
"Queen Fredegonde died peaceably in her bed in the year 597 at the ageof fifty-five years. Her funeral was pompously celebrated by theCatholic priests and she was buried in consecrated ground in thebasilica of St. Germain-des-Pres at Paris. In the language of thepanegyrists of our Kings, 'Fredegonde reigned long, happy and ably.' Ather death she left her kingdom intact to her son Clotaire the younger."
A shudder of horror passed over the hearers of this shocking history.The royal abominations stood in such strong contrast to the morals ofthe inhabitants of the Valley, that these good people imagined they hadheard the narrative of some frightful dream, the fabric of the delusionof a fever.
Gregory was the first to break the silence that ensued:
"Accordingly, Clotaire the younger, son of Fredegonde and Chilperic, isthe grandson of Clotaire the elder, the slayer of his little nephews,and is great-grandson to Clovis?"
"Yes--and how worthy of his stock he is proving himself you may judge,my son, by the era of new crimes that follows. His mother Fredegondebequeathed to him the implacable hatred with which she was herselfanimated against Brunhild. Accordingly, the mortal duel continuedunabated between the latter and the son of her en
emy."
"Alas, fresh disasters will befall Gaul, with the renewal of thesanguinary conflict!"
"Oh, indeed frightful disasters--frightful--because the crimes ofFredegonde pale before those of Brunhild, our present Queen, the Queenof the people of Burgundy."
"Father, can the crimes of Brunhild surpass Fredegonde's?"
"Ronan," said Odille carrying both her hands to her temples. "This massof murders, all committed in the same family, makes one's head reel withdizziness. One's mind feels over-burdened and tires in the effort tofollow the bloody thread that alone can lead through the maze of suchunnamable crimes. Great God, in what times do we live! What sights mayyet be reserved for our children!"
"Unless the demons themselves step next out of hell, little Odille, ourchildren will see nothing that could surpass what is happening now. As Isaid to you, the crimes of Fredegonde are as naught beside Brunhild's.If you only knew what is going on at this very hour in the magnificentcastle of Chalon-on-the-Saone, where the old Queen--the daughter, wifeand mother of kings--holds her own great-grandchildren under hertutelage--but no--I dare not--my lips refuse to narrate the shockingincidents--"
"Ronan is right. Shocking things, that language is unable to render,take place to-day in the castle of Queen Brunhild," replied Loysik witha shudder; but turning to his brother he proceeded to say: "Ronan, outof respect for these young families, out of respect for humanity atlarge, break off your narrative at where you now are."
"You are right, Loysik; I am bound to stop before the impossibility ofnarrating the misdeeds of Queen Brunhild, who, nevertheless, is one ofGod's creatures, and belongs to the human species."
At that moment one of the monk laborers approached Loysik and notifiedhim that someone was knocking at the outer gate of the monastery, andthat a voice from without announced a message from the bishop of Chalonand from Queen Brunhild.