e queen, had blessed this marriage; he was killed
on the steps of the altar while celebrating mass. Clovis, the brother of
Merovee, followed; then one of his sisters, and Audovere, the mother.
The king left Paris for Chelles one afternoon, for the chase; he had
previously entered his wife's apartment while she was occupied with her
toilette and struck her playfully on the shoulder with a light
wand,--the queen mistook him for another, and answered, without turning
round: "_Tout beau!_ Landry," and other words of great familiarity. Then
she perceived her error, and the king went out without a word; as he
dismounted, on his return, some one slipped a knife into his heart, "and
no one thought it worth while to run after the murderer."

Charibert, the short-lived king of Paris, had in his royal palace a serf
named Leudaste, who, when a fellow-servant, Markowefe, attracted the
monarch's favor and was made queen, contrived to ingratiate himself with
her to such an extent that he was made grand equerry and, later, Comte
de Tours. In his administration he proved himself capable of every
outrage; but the death of Charibert compelled him to seek refuge with
Chilperic, and he endeavored to win Fredegonde's favor as he had
Markowefe's. When Tours fell into the hands of Chilperic, in 574,
Leudaste was re-established in his office and resumed his old practices;
two years later, upon a petition addressed to the king by the bishop,
Saint Gregoire de Tours, he was dismissed. Thereupon he hatched a plot
against the bishop and against the queen who had not interposed to save
him; he declared to the king that the former had conspired to deliver
Tours to the King of Austrasie, and that the queen had done him an even
greater wrong, and he offered to produce witnesses. But his case fell to
the ground; the king, threatened with excommunication by the clergy for
bringing false charges against the revered prelate, threw all the
responsibility upon Leudaste, and that individual, diligently sought
for, had prudently disappeared.

He was accordingly solemnly excommunicated and declared anathema "from
the crown of his head to the sole of his feet." After some two years
passed in pillage and debauchery at the head of an organized band of
brigands in the domains of Gontran, he obtained permission to return to
Tours, and had the audacity to come and seek his pardon at the court of
Neustrie. Chilperic tolerated his presence, but advised him to avoid the