47. It is too true; but rhetorically put, in the first place--for we ought to be told how many 'all' the princes were;--in the second place, we must note that, supposing Clovis had in any degree "searched the Scriptures" as presented to the Western world by St. Jerome, he was likely, as a soldier-king, to have thought more of the mission of Joshua[19] and Jehu than of the patience of Christ, whose sufferings he thought rather of avenging than imitating: and the question whether the other Kings of the Franks should either succeed him, or, in envy of his enlarged kingdom, attack and dethrone, was easily in his mind convertible from a personal danger into the chance of the return of the whole nation to idolatry. And, in the last place, his faith in the Divine protection of his cause had been shaken by his defeat before Aries by the Ostrogoths; and the Frank leopard had not so wholly changed his spots as to surrender to an enemy the opportunity of a first spring. [Footnote 19: The likeness was afterwards taken up by legend, and the walls of Angouleme, after the battle of Poitiers, are said to have fallen at the sound of the trumpets of Clovis. "A miracle," says Gibbon, "which may be reduced to the supposition that some clerical engineer had secretly undermined the foundations of the rampart." I cannot too often warn my honest readers against the modern habit of "reducing" all history whatever to 'the supposition that' ... etc., etc. The legend is of course the natural and easy expression of a metaphor.] 48. Finally, and beyond all these personal questions, the forms of cruelty and subtlety--the former, observe, arising much out of a scorn of pain which was a condition of honour in their women as well as men, are in these savage races all founded on their love of glory in war, which can only be understood by comparing what remains of the same temper in the higher castes of the North American Indians; and, before tracing in final clearness the actual events of the reign of Clovis to their end, the reader will do well to learn this list of the personages of the great Drama, taking to heart the meaning of the _name_ of each, both in its probable effect on the mind of its bearer, and in its fateful expression of the course of their acts, and the consequences of it to future generations. 1. Clovis. Frank form, Hluodoveh. 'Glorious Holiness,' or consecration. Latin Chlodovisus, when baptized by St. Remy, softening afterwards through the centuries into Lhodovisus, Ludovicus, Louis. 2. Albofleda. 'White household fairy'? His youngest sister; married Theodoric (Theutreich, 'People's ruler'), the great King of the Ostrogoths. 3. Clotilde. Hlod-hilda. 'Glorious Battle-maid.' His wife. 'Hilda' first meaning Battle, pure; and then passing into Queen or Maid of Battle. Christianized to Ste Clotilde in France, and Ste Hilda of Whitby cliff.