eclusion
she constantly mingled with good works and with the austerity of
religious exercises the culture of letters; constantly also did she
guard her cherished traditions of the domestic hearth, and we find her
living again in the awkward verses of the greatest poet of that time,
Fortunatus, who had himself ordained priest that he might never be
constrained to leave her."

At the death of Clotaire, the monarchy was again divided into four
kingdoms, those of Paris, Soissons, Metz, and Burgundy,--soon reduced to
three by the death of Charibert, King of Paris. The Burgondes were under
the sway of Gontran, the Austrasien and Eastern Franks under Sigebert,
and the mingled population of Franks and Gallo-Romans which were called
Neustriens, or the Westerners, under Chilperic. Aquitaine was divided
between the three, and Paris was already of so much importance that none
of them was willing to yield her to the others, and it was agreed that
no one should enter the city without the consent of the other two. The
royal authority was weaker in Austrasie, now Belgium and Lorraine, the
petty chiefs stronger, and the manners and customs more Germanic and
barbaric; in Neustrie, now Ile-de-France, Normandy, etc., there were
more ancient cities, mere remnants of the Roman civilization and
vestiges of imperial administration. To the political rivalry to which
this disparity gave rise was added the personal animosity of the two
queens, Fredegonde and Brunehaut.

While Sigebert was fighting the Avars, barbarians from Asia, on the
eastern frontier, his two brothers amused themselves by pillaging his
western provinces. Chilperic had taken, for a most unwilling bride, a
younger sister of Brunehaut, Galswinthe, daughter of a king of the
Visigoths, notwithstanding the fierce jealousy of his mistress, or his
first wife, Fredegonde; her empire was, however, soon regained, and
Galswinthe was strangled in her sleep. Brunehaut incited her husband,
Sigebert, to a war of vengeance; Paris was taken, and Chilperic only
saved from ruin by his wife, who despatched two assassins against the
King of the Neustriens. The rights of inheritance of her son, Clotaire,
were impaired by the existence of two sons of Chilperic by a former
marriage. One of them, Merovee, imprudently married the widowed
Brunehaut, and his step-mother sent him to rejoin Sigebert. The Bishop
of Rouen, Pretextat, who had already narrowly escaped with his life, in
Paris, from the terribl