Saying this, the young King made a sign to the two men, who thereupon stepped towards the three children on the straw pallet. The sleep of childhood is so profound that little Merovee was not yet awakened by the noise. His two brothers, however, crouched back into the remotest corner of the pallet, stunned and frightened, especially at the sinister faces of the two men clad in hide jackets. The two cowering children held each other in a close embrace, trembling and without uttering a word. At a second sign from Clotaire II, one of the two men, he who carried the coil of rope, unwound it and stepped closer to the children, while his companion drew from his belt a long, straight and sharp knife, of the kind that is used by butchers; he slightly tested the freshly sharpened edge of the blade with the tip of his thumb, while Fredegonde's son urged the executioners on with the impatient order: "Move on, slaves; hurry up!" The executioner made to the King a sign with his hand, as if to say: "You need not fear, I shall be quick about it." In the meantime his assistant had come within reach of the children, who, livid and dumb with terror, trembled so convulsively that their teeth were heard to chatter. The executioner's assistant placed a hand on each, and without turning his head asked: "Which first? The taller, the smaller, or the one asleep?" "Begin with the eldest," answered Clotaire II in a hollow imperious voice. "Hurry up! Hurry up!" The two children retreated still farther back into the corner in which the pallet was placed and did not loosen their hold upon each other. "Mercy!" cried Sigebert in a smothered and plaintive voice. "Mercy for my brother! Mercy for me!" "We are a King's sons!" cried Corbe with even more anger than fear. "If you do any harm to me, my grandmother will have you all killed!" At this moment, awakened at last by the noise, little Merovee sat up on the pallet and looked around with wonderment but not in terror. The six-year-old child could not understand what was going on; he rubbed his eyes and turning his little head, with his eyes still swollen with sleep, hither and thither, he looked alternately from the four new arrivals to his brothers, as if asking what it all meant. The King having said "Begin with the eldest," the assistant seized Sigebert. More dead than alive, the hapless child offered no resistance, but let himself be bound hands and feet, as the lamb does in the slaughter-house; he only murmured in a woebegone voice: "Seigneur King! Good seigneur King, do not have us killed--why would you have us killed? We are willing to be slaves. Send us out to herd your sheep far away from here; we shall obey you in all things; but, O, seigneur, mercy, good seigneur King, mercy! Mercy for my two little brothers and for me!" As a worthy grandson of Clotaire I, Clotaire II remained unmoved by the prayers of his victim.