"We need time to overthrow their power. They have drawn around them all the beneficiary seigneurs whom the royal generosity enriched. Oh! Time! Time! Oh, how short is life. I need time; combined with it, will-power and force can do all. The time that I need is a long reign; I shall have it. The barbarian tribes on the other side of the Rhine have responded to our call; they will join our army. Thanks to their reinforcements, the troops of Clotaire will be crushed, and the son of Fredegonde will fall into my power! Oh! To inflict upon the son a slow death under the protracted tortures that I prepared for his mother! To avenge by his agony the murder of my sister Galeswinthe, and of my husband Sigebert! To take possession of Clotaire's kingdom and reign alone, the undisputed mistress of all Gaul for many a long year! That is my aim. And it will be reached. I feel myself full of life, strength and will-power!" "You will live a hundred years and more." "I believe it. I feel it. Aye, I feel within me indomitable will and vitality. To reign! the ambition of great souls! To reign like the Emperors of Rome! I wish to emulate them in all their sovereign omnipotence! I wish to count by the millions the instruments of my will! I wish, by a mere gesture, to cause the power of my arms to be felt from one confine of the world to the other! I wish to increase my kingdom to an infinite extent! I wish to be able to say: 'All these countries, from the nearest to the most distant, belong to me! I wish to concentrate the forces of all nations into my own hands and to cause all the peoples of the earth to bend under my yoke! I wish to raise in all parts of Gaul the marvels of art that now cover Burgundy--fortified castles, magnificent palaces, gold-naved basilicas, wide and interminable highways, prodigious monuments, all of which will in all the centuries to come re-echo the name of Brunhild! Should I allow vulgar scruples to stay my hand, having such grand designs in view? No! No! Could these children whom I unman, could these men whom I kill because they hinder my progress--could they or any of them as much as conceive my gigantic designs? Of what value to the world is the life of these obscure victims? Their bones will have turned to dust, their names will be buried in oblivion, when my name, repeated from age to age, will continue to amaze posterity!" "And these will be valid reasons for the priests and bishops, who besiege you with applications for grants of land and money, to pardon your crimes." "I forbid you to say an evil word against the priests; it is they who draw my triumphal car--" "The team is rather ruinous."