hed out in pursuit of those before whom
they had just been flying. This sport lasted until the two kings,
appearing with all the youth of their suites, rode up at a gallop,
brandishing their spears and chasing first one lot and then the other.
It was a fine sight to see so much temper among so many valiant folk,
for, great as was the number and the mixture of different nationalities,
no one was insulted or maltreated, though the contrary is often the case
among men in small numbers and known one to another."

After four or five months of tentative measures or of incidents which
taught both parties that they could not, either of them, hope to
completely destroy their opponents, the two allied brothers received at
Verdun, whither they had repaired to concert their next movement, a
messenger from Lothair, with peaceful proposals which they were
unwilling to reject. The principal was that, with the exception of
Italy, Aquitaine, and Bavaria, to be secured without dispute to their
then possessors, the Frankish empire should be divided into three
portions, that the arbiters elected to preside over the partition should
swear to make it as equal as possible, and that Lothair should have his
choice, with the title of emperor. About mid-June, 842, the three
brothers met on an island of the Saone, near Chalons, where they began
to discuss the questions which divided them; but it was not till more
than a year after, in August, 843, that assembling, all three of them,
with their umpires, at Verdun, they at last came to an agreement about
the partition of the Frankish empire, save the three countries which it
had been beforehand agreed to accept. Louis kept all the provinces of
Germany of which he was already in possession, and received besides, on
the left bank of the Rhine, the towns of Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with
the territory appertaining to them. Lothair, for his part, had the
eastern belt of Gaul, bounded on one side by the Rhine and the Alps, on
the other by the courses of the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone,
starting from the confluence of the two latter rivers, and, further, the
country comprised between the Meuse and the Scheldt, together with
certain countships lying to the west of that river. To Charles fell all
the rest of Gaul: Vasconia or Biscaye, Septimania, the marshes of Spain,
beyond the Pyrenees; and the other countries of Southern Gaul which had
enjoyed hitherto, under the title of the kingdom of Aquitaine, a