It is with Warin's son Isembart, living in the time of Charlemagne, that the better known history of the Guelphs begins. He was the hero of that ridiculous fable about the "pups," which has been invented to explain their adoption of their peculiar name. Isembart's wife Irmentrude, it is said, having uncharitably reproached a poor beggarwoman for having borne triplets--which she held to be a proof of unfaithful conduct towards her husband--was punished for her gratuitous accusation by being herself made to bear at one birth, not three sons, but twelve. To screen herself from the same reproach which she had unkindly fastened upon the beggar, she hit upon the rather inept device of having eleven of those newly-born sons drowned as supposed "whelps." The twelfth she kept--and he is said to have become "Welf," the founder of the race. The other eleven were happily rescued by their father, who came up just in time to save them. Ten of them lived to become founders of princely houses. The eleventh became a bishop. One of them is said to have been Thassilo, the reputed ancestor of the Hohenzollerns. The real meaning of all this legend obviously is that, by survival and intermarriage with other illustrious families of Europe, the Guelphs have in course of time become, in a sense, the parent of most reigning lines--Zähringens, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Capets, Bourbons, and the rest of them. The fable of children being sent to be drowned as "whelps"--and in every instance happily rescued--is, as it happens, by no means peculiar to the Guelphs. It occurs in the Black Forest, in connection with a family bearing the name of "Hund." It occurs in Lower Lorraine in that pretty _trouvère_ legend recording the doings of "Helias," the "Chevalier au Cygne," whom we moderns know as "Lohengrin." It is interesting to note that, along with that fable, Guelph tradition in Bavaria shares with the tradition of Lorraine the far more attractive and poetical myth of an enchanted swan--the swan, in fact, of "Lohengrin"--a bird specifically emblematizing purity--whence the extinct "Order of the Swan" of the Margraves of Brandenburg. That order was an aristocratic "Social Purity League," which Frederick William IV. would gladly have revived, could he but have found sufficient candidates for it among his nobility. But his proposal met with very scanty support. Hence, also, the equally ancient "Order of the Swan" of Cleves, having a like object.