later romanized inhabitants and converted to the
Christian faith by Gallo-Roman priests, the indigenous inhabitants
finally lost all memory of the teachings of their Druid bards and the
firm belief in reincarnation which sent the Celtic warrior laughing to
his death; but in the traditions of the peasantry, abounding with nature
myths, sorcerers still haunt their mountain caves, fairies and May
maidens still flutter about their crystal streams.

[Illustration: THE CHATEAU]

One more strain, that of the heroes of the Nibelungen, the blond
Burgundian giants who had forced the Romans to share with them a portion
of their conquered territories, was destined to add height and virile
force to the Celto-Roman people of this country. Strangely differing
from their ancient enemies the merciless Teutons, these mighty
Burgundians, most human of all the vandal hords, in an epic of tragic
grandeur rivaling the classic tales of mythology, for a century
maintained an autonomous and mighty kingdom. Gentle as gigantic,
indomitable in war, invading but not destroying, their greatest monarch,
Gondebaud, who could exterminate his rival brothers, and enact a
beneficient code of laws which forms the basis of the Gallic
jurisprudence, was their protagonist and prototype. Beside his figure,
looming in the mists of history, is Clothilde, his niece, the
proselyting Christian queen, who fled in her ox cart from Geneva to the
arms of Clovis the Merovingian, first king of France. Enthroned at
Lyons, Gondebaud issued the laws which regulated the establishment of
his people in their new domains, which spread over what was later the
great French Duchy of Burgundy, the whole extent of occidental
Switzerland and Savoy. "Like brothers," it is related by the Latin
chroniclers, they mingled with the resident inhabitants, dividing lands
and serfs by lot, marrying their daughters, and quickly adopting their
language and their Christian faith.

Thus the whole of Romand Switzerland was deeply impregnated with the
Burgundian influence, assimilating its vigorous race type and ruled by
its laws. Although the country later passed under the universal
domination of Charlemagne, the character of the people was little
affected by the distant rule of the great monarch, and when the
Carlovingian Empire fell apart and Rodolph I, of the second Burgundian
line, crowned himself king in the monastery of St. Maurice, his subjects
were of the same race and customs as those o