of persons about the court of magic arts practised against her boy, and burnt them alive, or broke them on the wheel. Many other acts of murder and treachery are attributed to her, notably the death of Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, whom she detested for the part he had taken in the marriage of Merovech and Brunhildis, and her crimes fill many a page in the gloomy annals of Gregory of Tours. A legend tells how two holy bishops once stood before the gate of the palace at Soissons. ‘What seest thou over this house?’ said one. ‘I see nothing but the red standard which Chilperich the king has ordered to be set up on its topmost gable.’ ‘But _I_ see,’ said the first, ‘the sword of God raised above that wicked house to destroy it altogether.’ Meanwhile, Chilperich’s wars with his brother of Burgundy and his nephew of Austrasia continued to fill central Gaul with blood and ashes. They ceased for a moment when the Austrasian nobles, against the will of Brunhildis, forced their little king to make peace and alliance with his father’s murderer. But no one could long trust Chilperich, and after less than a year the old league between Austrasia and Burgundy was renewed. [Sidenote: Death of Chilperich I., 584.] In 584 Chilperich, to the great joy of all Gaul, was murdered by an unknown hand:—‘As he was returning from the hunt to his royal manor of Chelles, a certain man struck him with a knife beneath the shoulder, and pierced his belly with a second stroke, whereupon he fell down and breathed out his foul soul,’ says the chronicler. He was perhaps the worst of the wicked Merovings—cruel, unjust, gluttonous, and drunken, vain, boastful, and irreligious, the worthy son of the ruffian Chlothar, and grandson of the murderer Chlodovech. But his untiring energy and reckless courage bore him safely through many an evil day, and he died leaving the kingdom he had inherited in 561 increased to three times its original bulk. Queen Fredegundis had borne one more son, named Chlothar, to her husband just four months before his murder, so that Neustria was not left altogether without an heir. But Fredegundis feared that Guntram and his nephew would now seize the whole realm, and slay her with her infant. She took sanctuary at Paris; but when the king of Burgundy arrived he showed his superiority to the morals of his family by sparing the life of the wicked queen, and recognising her son as king of Neustria. Brunhildis sought in vain to induce Guntram to give over to her the murderess of her husband; he refused, and Fredegundis took advantage of his kindness to hire assassins to make attempts on the lives both of Brunhildis and her son the young king of Austrasia. Luckily the project failed in both cases.