This impulse given to the Christian spirit did not slacken: St. Clotilda, Queen of the Franks, who was guided by the counsels of the Archbishop of Rheims, the eminent doctor St. Remigius; St. Albofleda, sister of Clovis; St. Radegonda of Thuringia, wife of King Clotaire, who founded a hospital at Athies, and a monastery at Poitiers; and St. Bathilda, of noble birth, who, after degrading herself to the humble condition of slavery, shared the throne of Neustria as the wife of Clovis II., were so many heroines of charity. Bathilda, in the course of a long and wise administration of affairs (645–680), was the good angel of the unfortunate. The abbot St. Gènes was her almoner, and her privy councillors were St. Eloi, St. Owen, St. Leger--venerable prelates whose active and pious co-operation was in perfect harmony with the prompting of her own heart. She founded abbeys, and, what was even more useful, increased the number of hospitals which were built in every direction. The royal abbey of Chelles, near Paris, founded by Queen Clotilda and rebuilt by Bathilda, and another monastery which she constructed after the same plan, were establishments of religious education, literary instruction, and benevolence. [Illustration: Fig. 269.--Works of Charity.--Reduced Fac-simile of a Drawing of the Fifteenth Century, attributed to Savonarola, in the National Collection of Drawings. The artist shows the practice of works of mercy being carried on in each of the detached cottages, the mottoes recalling the texts in which Christ intimates that at the Last Judgment the exercise of Charity will weigh heaviest in the scale. In No. 1, the sick are being tended in their beds or picked up in the streets; in No. 2, the people are being clothed; No. 3 represents travellers who are being given to drink; No. 4, the hungry receiving bread; No. 5, pilgrims being sheltered; No. 6, a dead body being prepared for burial; No. 7, the visiting of prisoners. The last scene is a sanctuary in which the divine sacrifice--the true source of Christian charity--is being celebrated, whilst a penitent is obtaining the remission of his sins because he has practised charity. In the foreground rich men are throwing their money into a heap, and the poor are receiving their share of it. The monk whose bust is seen to the left is perhaps Bernardin de Feltri, preaching in encouragement of this good work.]