The scanty population, worn out with misery, fled to rocks and islands in the lakes, and to the seaport towns; but they seem to have found the Lombards merciful masters, and bowed their necks meekly to the inevitable yoke. The towns alone seem to have offered resistance. Pavia Alboin besieged three years, and could not take. He swore some wild oath of utter destruction to all within, and would have kept it. At last they capitulated. As Alboin rode in at St. John's gate, his horse slipped up; and could not rise, though the grooms beat him with their lance-butts. A ghostly fear came on the Lombards. 'Remember, lord king, thy cruel oath, and cancel it; for there are Christian folk in the city.' Alboin cancelled his oath, and the horse rose at once. So Alboin spared the people of Pavia, and entered the palace of old Dietrich the Ostrogoth, as king of Italy, as far as the gates of Rome and Ravenna. And what was his end? Such an end as he deserved; earned and worked out for himself. A great warrior, he had destroyed many nations, and won a fair land. A just and wise governor, he had settled North Italy on some rough feudal system, without bloodshed or cruelty. A passionate savage, he died as savages deserve to die. You recollect Rosamund his Gepid bride? In some mad drinking-bout (perhaps cherishing still his old hatred of her family) he sent her her father's skull full of wine, and bade her drink before all. She drank, and had her revenge. The story has become world-famous from its horror: but I suppose I must tell it you in its place.--How she went to Helmichis the shield-bearer, and he bade her get Peredeo the Kemper-man to do the deed: and how Peredeo intrigued with one of her bower-maidens, and how Rosamund did a deed of darkness, and deceived Peredeo; and then said to him, I am thy mistress; thou must slay thy master, or thy master thee. And how he, like Gyges in old Herodotus's tale, preferred to survive; and how Rosamund bound the king's sword to his bedstead as he slept his mid-day sleep, and Peredeo did the deed; and how Alboin leapt up, and fought with his footstool, but in vain. And how, after he was dead, Rosamund became Helmichis' leman, as she had been Peredeo's, and fled with him to Ravenna, with all the treasure and Alpswintha, Alboin's daughter by the Frankish wife; and how Longinus the exarch persuaded her to poison Helmichis, and marry him; and how she gave Helmichis the poisoned cup as he came out of the bath, and he saw by the light of her wicked eyes that it was poison, and made her drink the rest; and so they both fell dead. And then how Peredeo and the treasure were sent to the Emperor at Constantinople; and how Peredeo slew a great lion in the theatre; and how Tiberius, when he saw that he was so mighty a man of his hands, bade put his eyes out; and how he hid two knives in his sleeves, and slew with them two great chamberlains of the Emperor; and so died, like Samson,