de her drink before all. She drank, and had her revenge.

The story has become world-famous from its horror: but I suppose I must
tell it you in its place.--How she went to Helmichis the shield-bearer,
and he bade her get Peredeo the Kemper-man to do the deed: and how
Peredeo intrigued with one of her bower-maidens, and how Rosamund did a
deed of darkness, and deceived Peredeo; and then said to him, I am thy
mistress; thou must slay thy master, or thy master thee. And how he,
like Gyges in old Herodotus's tale, preferred to survive; and how
Rosamund bound the king's sword to his bedstead as he slept his mid-day
sleep, and Peredeo did the deed; and how Alboin leapt up, and fought with
his footstool, but in vain. And how, after he was dead, Rosamund became
Helmichis' leman, as she had been Peredeo's, and fled with him to
Ravenna, with all the treasure and Alpswintha, Alboin's daughter by the
Frankish wife; and how Longinus the exarch persuaded her to poison
Helmichis, and marry him; and how she gave Helmichis the poisoned cup as
he came out of the bath, and he saw by the light of her wicked eyes that
it was poison, and made her drink the rest; and so they both fell dead.
And then how Peredeo and the treasure were sent to the Emperor at
Constantinople; and how Peredeo slew a great lion in the theatre; and how
Tiberius, when he saw that he was so mighty a man of his hands, bade put
his eyes out; and how he hid two knives in his sleeves, and slew with
them two great chamberlains of the Emperor; and so died, like Samson,
says old Paul, having got good weregeld for the loss of his eyes--a man
for either eye.

And old Narses died at Rome, at a great age; and they wrapt him in lead,
and sent him to Byzant with all his wealth. But some say that while he
was still alive, he hid his wealth in a great cistern, and slew all who
knew of it save one old man, and swore him never to reveal the place. But
after Narses' death that old man went to Constantinople to Tiberius the
Caesar, and told him how he could not die with that secret on his mind;
and so Tiberius got all the money, so much that it took many days to
carry away, and gave it all to the poor, as was his wont.

A myth--a fable: but significant, as one more attempt to answer the
question of all questions in a Teuton's mind--What had become of the
Nibelungen hoard? What had become of all the wealth of Rome?

LECTURE VIII--THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN

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