"
The record of their later years has no place in this sketch of
the girlhood of Clotilda; but it is one of the most interesting
and dramatic of the old-time historic stories. The dream of that
sad little princess in the old convent at Geneva, "to make her
boy-hero a Christian, and to be revenged on the murderer of her
parents," was in time fulfilled. For on Christmas-day, in the
year 493, the young king and three thousand of his followers were
baptized amid gorgeous ceremonial in the great church of St.
Martin at Rheims.
The story of the young queen's revenge is not to be told in these
pages. But, though terrible, it is only one among the many tales
of vengeance that show us what fierce and cruel folk our
ancestors were, in the days when passion instead of love ruled
the hearts of men and women, and of boys and girls as well; and
how favored are we of this nineteenth century, in all the peace
and prosperity and home happiness that surround us.
But from this conversion, as also from this revenge, came the
great power of Clovis and Clotilda; for, ere his death, in the
year 511, he brought all the land under his sway from the Rhine
to the Rhone, the ocean and the Pyrenees; he was hailed by his
people with the old Roman titles of Consul and Augustus, and
reigned victorious as the first king of France.
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