now
Dietrich's hand was off them, to ill-use the conquered Italians. The
Goths soon grew to dislike her, and her Roman tendencies, her Roman
education of the lad. One day she boxed his ears for some fault. He ran
crying out into the Heldensaal, and complained to the heroes. They sent
a deputation to Amalasuentha, insolent enough. 'The boy should not be
made a scholar of.' 'She meant to kill the boy and marry again. Had not
old Dietrich forbidden free Goths to go to schoolmasters, and said, that
the boy who was taught to tremble at a cane, would never face a lance?'
So they took the lad away from the women, and made a ruffian of him. What
with drink, women, idleness, and the company of wild young fellows like
himself, he was early ruined, body and soul. Poor Amalasuentha, not
knowing whither to turn, took the desperate resolution of offering Italy
to the Emperor Justinian. She did not know that her cousin Theodatus had
been beforehand with her--a bad old man, greedy and unjust, whose
rapacity she had had to control again and again, and who hated her in
return. Both send messages to Justinian. The wily Emperor gave no
direct answer: but sent his ambassador to watch the course of events. The
young prince died of debauchery, and the Goths whispered that his mother
had poisoned him. Meanwhile Theodatus went on from bad to worse;
accusations flowed in to Amalasuentha of his lawless rapacity: but he was
too strong for her; and she, losing her head more and more, made the
desperate resolve of marrying him, as the only way to keep him quiet. He
was the last male heir of the royal Amalungs. The marriage would set him
right in the eyes of the Goths, while it would free her from the
suspicion of having murdered her son, in order to reign alone. Theodatus
meanwhile was to have the name of royalty; but she was to keep the power
and the money--a foolish, confused plan, which could have but one ending.
Theodatus married her of course, and then cast her into prison, seized
all her treasures, and threw himself into the arms of that party among
the Goths, who hated Amalasuentha for having punished their oppressions.
The end was swift and sad. By the time that Justinian's ambassador
landed, Amalasuentha was strangled in her bath; and all that Peter the
ambassador had to do was, to catch at the cause of quarrel, and declare
'inexpiable war' on the part of Justinian, as the avenger of the Queen.

And then began that dreadful