lt, then, at the obstacles the marriage
encountered, at the complications mingled with it, and at the indirect
means employed on both sides to cause its success or failure. The
account of Fredegaire is but a picture of this struggle and its
incidents, a little amplified or altered by imagination or the credulity
of the period; but the essential features of the picture, the disguise of
Aurelian, the hurry of Clotilde, the prudent recollection of Aridius,
Gondebaud's alternations of fear and violence, and Clotilde's vindictive
passion when she is once out of danger, there is nothing in all this out
of keeping with the manners of the time or the position of the actors.
Let it be added that Aurelian and Aridius are real personages who are met
with elsewhere in history, and whose parts as played on the occasion of
Clotilde's marriage are in harmony with the other traces that remain of
their lives.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF TOLBIACUM----144]

The consequences of the marriage justified before long the importance
which had on all sides been attached to it. Clotilde had a son; she was
anxious to have him baptized, and urged her husband to consent. "The
gods you worship," said she, "are nought, and can do nought for
themselves or others; they are of wood, or stone, or metal." Clovis
resisted, saying, "It is by the command of our gods that all things are
created and brought forth. It is plain that your God hath no power;
there is no proof even that He is of the race of the gods." But Clotilde
prevailed; and she had her son baptized solemnly, hoping that the
striking nature of the ceremony might win to the faith the father whom
her words and prayers had been powerless to touch. The child soon died,
and Clovis bitterly reproached the queen, saying, "Had the child been
dedicated to my gods he would be alive; he was baptized in the name of
your God, and he could not live." Clotilde defended her God and prayed.
She had a second son, who was also baptized, and fell sick. "It cannot
be otherwise with him than with his brother," said Clovis; "baptized in
the name of your Christ, he is going to die." But the child was cured,
and lived; and Clovis was pacified and less incredulous of Christ. An
event then came to pass which affected him still more than the sickness
or cure of his children. In 496 the Allemannians, a Germanic
confederation like the Franks, who also had been, for some time past,
assailing the Roman empire on the