The truth was that a pretext for attack far better than the withholding of Honoria had suddenly appeared. The province of Africa had been lost to the Romans by the invasion of the Vandals who were now governed by a man not unlike Attila himself, Genseric. It is true he was not a pagan like the Hun, but he was an Arian, and he had gathered under his banner all the Barbarians that surged among the ruins of the Roman cities of Africa. Genseric had married his son to the daughter of Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, but as this alliance did not bring him all he hoped, he returned the girl to her father minus her ears and her nose, which he had cut off. Fearing lest Theodoric should invoke the aid of the Empire against him for this unspeakable deed, Genseric had sought the alliance of Attila. A new vision opened before the Hun; he saw a new alliance, if not a new suzerainty, offered him with whose aid he might attack the Empire both north and south, so that while he descended upon the richest of the European provinces of Rome--Gaul, Genseric should fall upon Italy herself. In this scheme for the final loot of the West Attila was still further encouraged by the fact that the Franks, the most warlike of the Barbarian tribes in Europe (that which was destined first to become Catholic and later to refound the Empire), were in anarchy by reason of the death of their chief, whose inheritance was in dispute between his two sons. The elder of these had appealed to Attila for his assistance, while the younger had turned to Rome and had become indeed the protégé, if not the adopted son, of the great Roman general Aetius. This young man at Aetius’ suggestion went to Rome to petition the Emperor, and there Priscus saw him “a beardless boy, his golden hair floating on his shoulders.” Here was a quarrel after Attila’s own heart. The Vandals should invade Italy from Africa, he would fall upon Gaul, the passages of the Rhine being opened for him by the Franks. He forgot all about Honoria. At once he sent a message to Valentinian informing him of his determination to attack the Visigoths and bidding him not to interfere. The Visigoths, he declared, were his subjects, subjects who had escaped from his dominion, but over whom he had never abandoned his rights. He pointed out too how dangerous they were to the peace of the Empire, on whose behalf, as much as on his own, he now proposed to chastise them.