By the faith of a Vagre! That passage from the prelude to the Salic Law always recurs to the mind when Frankish kings or queens are on the tapis. Let us enter the lair of Brunhild--splendid lair! Not rustic is this burg, like Neroweg's, the large burg that we old Vagres reduced to ashes! No; this great Queen has a refined taste. One of her passions is for architecture. The noble woman loves the ancient arts of Greece and Italy. Aye, she loves art! Regale your sight with the magnificent castle that she built at Chalon-on-the-Saone, the capital of Burgundy. Magnificent as are all her other castles, none, not even that of Bourcheresse, can compare with her royal residence, the superb gardens of which stretch to the very banks of the Saone. It is a palace at once gorgeous and martial. In these days of incessant feuds, kings and seigneurs always turn their homes into fortifications. So also did Brunhild. Her palace is girt by thick walls, flanked with massive towers. One only entrance--a vaulted passage closed at its two extremities by enormous iron-barred doors--leads within. Night and day Brunhild's men-at-arms mount guard in the vault. In the inside courtyards are numerous other lodges for horsemen and footmen. The halls of the palace are vast; they are paved in marble or in mosaics, and are ornamented with colonnades of jasper, porphyry and alabaster surmounted with capitals of gilded bronze. These architectural wonders, masterpieces of art, the spoils of the temples and palaces of Gaul, were transported with the help of an immense number of relays of slaves and beasts of burden from their original and distant sites to the palace of the Queen. These vast and gorgeous halls, which are furthermore stored with massive ivory, gold and silver furniture, with exquisitely wrought pagan statues, with precious vases and tripods, are but vestibules to the private chamber of Brunhild. The sun has just risen. The spacious halls are filling with the Queen's domestic slaves, with officers of her troops, with high dignitaries of her establishment--chamberlains, equerries, stewards, constables--all coming to receive their mistress's orders.