aid, not to his victories,
but to his conversion. He was baptized by the Bishop of Reims, Remi, on
Christmas Day, 496. "From that date, he had the alliance of the bishops
throughout all Gaul against the Visigoths and the Burgondes, and his
reign was assured."

This conversion, it is said, had been earnestly desired by his wife
Clotilde, a niece of Gondebaud, King of the Burgondes, who had
stipulated with her royal spouse that her first-born should be
"consecrated to Christ by baptism." It also contributed greatly to his
final establishment in Paris, a capital which he had long coveted and
from which his predatory attacks had been constantly turned aside by the
efforts of a virgin, Sainte-Genevieve, whom the Parisians still honor as
their patron saint. The central position of this city, between the Rhine
and the Loire, enabled him to keep a watchful eye upon Brittany,
Aquitaine, the Burgondes, and the Frankish tribes of Belgium.

At his death, his kingdom was divided among his four sons, Paris, with
Poitiers, Perigueux, Saintes, and Bordeaux, falling to the lot of
Childebert. From the confused records of these barbaric times the names
of two women issue, and have remained permanently engraven upon the
tablets of history,--one of them as that of a personification of
Christian and feminine virtues rare at any age and doubly so in these
dark ages, and the other that of a monstrous queen whose crimes have
made her immortal. Radegonde was a daughter of Bertaire, King of
Thuringe, killed by his brother Hermanfried at the instigation of the
wife of the latter; the murderer invited Thierry, King of Metz, and
Clotaire, King of Soissons, sons of Clovis, to invade the kingdom, and
in the partition of the booty, Radegonde fell to the share of Clotaire.
Charmed by her original beauty, the king had her educated with unusual
care, and, later, married her, but the queen sought only to forget her
earthly dignities in ministering to the poor, in pious meditation, and
in long conversations upon the Scriptures with some learned prelate.
"She is a nun," said Clotaire, "and not a queen;" and he ended by
killing her last surviving brother. Whereupon she fled to Noyon and
implored Saint Medard at the altar to give her the protection of the
Church; Clotaire threatened and protested, but finally permitted her to
found a church and a convent at Poitiers, in which she immured herself
till her death, in 587,--thirty-seven years. "During this long s