[Illustration 4: _FREDEGOND WATCHING THE MARRIAGE OF CHILPERIC AND GALSWINTHA After the painting by L. Alma-Tadema_ _Chilperic had taken a most unwilling bride, Galswintha, daughter of a king of the Visigoths and younger sister of Brunehild, notwithstanding the fierce jealousy of one of his concubines, Fredegond, who soon had the new queen strangled and then occupied her place. This blond-haired woman of low birth, with most alluring charms and versed in all the arts to arouse passion, soon reduced her royal paramour to such subjection that he had her crowned with great pomp in his capital of Soissons. Beginning with this marriage, atrocities did not cease until the entire family became extinct. But to this very day to quote the words of a French poet "The fair, the blonde, the terrible Fredegond is unforgotten and sung in lurid songs from Austrasia to Périgord"._] Her rival and lifelong enemy Brunehild, who had vied with her in crimes and vices, met with a far more terrible end. After many years of further struggle she fell into the hands of Chlotar II., a son of Fredegond, who inflicted upon her a terrible punishment. Having charged her with the murder of at least ten Merovingian princes, he caused her, though a matron of seventy, to be frightfully tortured for several days; then she was placed on a camel and led for shame through the camp. Finally, she was tied to the tail of a wild horse and dragged to death: the hoofs of the horse crushed the limbs of the sinful queen into a shapeless mass. I know of no poem in the whole range of German literature which gives a more ghastly picture of that realistic scene of atrocity than one in which Ferdinand Freiligrath relates: "How once in the fields of the river Marne near Chalons Chlotar, the son of Chilperic, had the sinful Brunehild Tied by her silver hair to a wild stallion; To drag her galloping through the Prankish camp. The neighing stallion started, and the hind hoofs struck The aged form, breaking and wrenching limb from limb. Dishevelled flew her whitened hair about her bloody brow. The pointed pebbles drank her royal blood; and shuddering Beheld the blood-accustomed Franks the horror of the judgment Of their wrathful king Chlotar. The glow of the red fires burning before every tent Fell ghastly on the pain-distorted countenance. With icy shower now the Marne washed from it the dust The camel which had borne her through the ranks was spattered with her blood...." (H. S.)