This grand old King dies in peace. Aldwin dies likewise, and to them succeed their sons, Alboin and Cunimund--the latter probably the prince who made the jest about the brood-mares--and they two will fight the quarrel out. Cunimund, says Paul, began the war--of course that is his story. Alboin is growing a great man; he has married a daughter of Clotaire, king of the Franks: and now he takes to his alliance the Avars, who have just burst into the Empire, wild people who afterwards founded a great kingdom in the Danube lands, and they ravage Cunimund's lands. He will fight the Lombards first, nevertheless: he can settle the Avars after. He and his, says Paul, are slain to a man. Alboin makes a drinking-cup of his skull, carries off his daughter Rosamund ('Rosy-mouth'), and a vast multitude of captives and immense wealth. The Gepidae vanish from history; to this day (says Paul) slaves either of the Lombards or the Huns (by whom he rather means Avars); and Alboin becomes the hero of his time, praised even to Paul's days in sagas, Saxon and Bavarian as well as Lombard, for his liberality and his glory. We shall see now how he has his chance at the Nibelungen hoard. He has heard enough (as all Teutons have) of Italy, its beauty, and its weakness. He has sent five thousand chosen warriors to Narses, to help him against Totila and the Ostrogoths; and they have told him of the fair land and large, with its vineyards, olive-groves, and orchards, waste by war and pestilence, and crying out for human beings to come and till it once more.