Whether this Queen of Helvetia is our Bertha with the great foot we know not. The name is found in many curious old legends like the German one of Frau Bertha, a kind of tutelar genius of spinners, with an immense foot and a long iron nose, which doubtless served as a spindle. And an old manuscript, long hidden in some obscure corner of a German monastery, tells how King Pepin, wishing to wed the fair Bertha of Brittany, sent his chief officers to bring her to his court. The steward, who had charge of the escort, was not without ambitious views respecting his own daughter. He ordered his servants to put Bertha to death on the way. But they, instead of killing her, left her in a forest. Not long after—O happy chance!—King Pepin, overtaken by night while hunting, awaited the dawn in a house where he was served by the most beautiful maid his eyes had ever beheld. Of course it was Bertha with her great foot, which, we may be sure, she gracefully concealed beneath her flowing garments. And so they were married. Old poems sing of her industry, and tell us she knew how to spin like the princesses of scriptural and Homeric days. She is represented, too, on old coins seated on a throne with a distaff in her hands. All writers speak of her as _Berthe au grand pied_, but as otherwise beautiful and skilful in wielding the earliest implement of feminine industry. We may safely imagine her as tapping the mighty Charlemagne, leader of peerless knights, while yet a boy, with her convenient distaff; for her ascendency over him was such that he always regarded her with great reverence, even after his elevation to power! And Bertha was not the only princess that laid her hand hold of the spindle. When the tomb of Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V. of France, was opened at St. Denis, among other things was found a distaff of gilded wood, but greatly decayed. And there is another in the Hôtel de Cluny, once used by some queen of France, we forget whom, on which is carven all the notable women of the Old Testament. So too the daughters of Edward the Elder of England, though carefully educated, were so celebrated for their achievements in spinning and weaving that the term spinster is said to be derived from them. And S. Walburga, the daughter of S. Richard, King of the Saxons, used to spin and weave among the royal and saintly maidens of Wimburn Minster. It was a common custom in those days. The distaff and the spindle were considered “the arms of every virtuous woman.” The ancients held the use of them as such an accomplishment that Minerva is said to have come down to earth to teach the Greek women how to spin. Venus herself did not disdain to take upon herself the semblance of a spinner of fair wool when she appeared to Helen.