It was, as we are told, by the secret advice of these two men and other nobles of Austrasia that Chlothair invaded the kingdom. However strong might be their disinclination to the rule of a Neustrian King, their determination not to submit again to “the hateful regimen of a woman,” and that woman their old foe Brunechildis, was even stronger. The folly of the old queen, who was at the same time secretly plotting against the life of her Burgundian mayor of the palace, Warnachar, aided their designs. When it came to the decision of battle, the soldiers who should have defended the cause of the young king and his great-grandmother turned their backs without striking a blow. Chlothair had only to pursue and to capture the little princes and their ancestress. One of the princes escaped, and was never heard of more; another was spared as being the godson of Chlothair; two were put to death. The aged Brunechildis was, we are told, tortured for three days by the son of her old rival Fredegundis, led through the camp seated on a camel, then tied by her hair, by one foot and one arm, to a most vicious horse, and dashed to pieces by his furious career. Such were the tender mercies of a Merovingian king. This first appearance of Pippin and Arnulf on the stage of history is not a noble one, yet of actual disloyalty or ingratitude they were probably not guilty, since to Theudebert, the victim of the resentment of Brunechildis, rather than to the family of Theodoric, his vanquisher and murderer, they owed allegiance and gratitude. The subsequent career of the two nobles, however, is more to their credit. In the year after the overthrow of Brunechildis, the see of Metz having fallen vacant, there was a general outcry among the people that none was so fitted to fill it as Arnulf, the _domesticus_ and _consiliarius_ of the king. There was on his part the usual tearful protestation of unfitness and unwillingness, but the curtain fell on his acceptance of the episcopal dignity. His biographer tells the story of his three-days’ fastings, his hair shirt, his boundless hospitality to poor vagrants, to monks, and to other travellers. We perceive, however, that he had not wholly lost his interest in state affairs, for in the year 624 he, with his friend Pippin, the _major domus_, procured the disgrace of a certain nobleman named Chrodoald, who was charged with having abused the king’s favor to his own enrichment and the spoliation of the estates of other Austrasians. In the next year, too, when Dagobert I., son of Chlothair, who had been sent to rule over a shorn and diminished Austrasia, met his father near Paris, and had a sharp contention with him over the narrow limits of his kingdom, it was Bishop Arnulf who, at the head of the other bishops and nobles, succeeded in reconciling father and son.