After the great and brilliant figure of Clothilde, history presents us with a hideous offset in the baleful personality of Fredegonde, the woman whose glance was witchcraft, the sorceress who slew princes. She accused her rivals of Magic and condemned them to tortures which she alone merited. Chilperic had one remaining son by his first wife; this young prince, who was named Clovis, was attached to a daughter of the people whose mother passed for a sorceress. Mother and daughter were both accused of disturbing the reason of Clovis by means of philtres and with murdering the two children of Fredegonde by magical spells. The unhappy women were arrested; the daughter, Klodswinthe, was beaten with rods, her beautiful hair cut off, and this was hung by Fredegonde on the door of the prince’s chamber. Subsequently Klodswinthe was brought up for sentence. Her firm and simple answers astonished the judges, and the chronicle says that it was proposed to submit her to the test of boiling water. A consecrated ring was placed in a tub set over a great fire and the accused, clothed in white, after having confessed and communicated, had to plunge her arm in the tub, in search of the ring. Her unchanged features made everyone cry out that a miracle had taken place, but there was another cry, which was one of reprobation and horror, when the unhappy child drew forth her arm frightfully burnt. She then asked permission to speak and said to her judges and the people: “You demanded a miracle from God to establish my innocence. God is not to be tempted, and He does not suspend the laws of Nature in response to the caprice of men; but He gives strength to those who believe in Him, and for me has performed a greater wonder than that which He refused to you. This water has burned me, yet have I plunged my whole arm into it and have brought forth the ring. I have neither cried, whitened, nor quivered under this horrible torture. Had I been a magician, as you say, I should have resorted to witchcraft so that I might not be burnt; but I am a Christian and God has given me grace to prove it by the constancy of martyrs.” Such logic was not of the kind that they understood at that barbarous epoch; Klodswinthe was sent back to prison, there to await execution; but God took pity upon her, and the chronicle from which the account is drawn says that He called her to Himself. If it be a legend only, it must be allowed that it is beautiful and deserves to be kept in memory.