queen. As the sovereigns were one day attending mass in the basilica of
Paris, Leudaste entered boldly, traversed the crowd, and knelt at the
feet of Fredegonde, imploring her forgiveness. The king had him expelled
from the church, but, instead of taking warning, he lingered in the
shops around the market-place in the Cite, selecting jewels and rich
stuffs with which to propitiate the queen; when she issued from the
church and saw him, she despatched her guards to arrest him; one of them
was wounded, and another gave him a sword-cut over the head; as he fled
across the Petit-Pont, he fell and broke his leg. The manner and quality
of a torture that should be appropriate for him were carefully discussed
by the royal pair; he was tended by eminent physicians that he might be
duly strengthened for it; but when Fredegonde learned that gangrene had
appeared in his wounds, she had him dragged from his bed, stretched on
the pavement with his neck on a great iron bar, and his head crushed by
another heavy bar in the hands of the executioner.

After the murder of Chilperic, the people began to murmur, and the
gentle King Gontran, according to Saint Gregoire of Tours, "in order to
put an end to the evil custom of killing kings, went one day to a church
where all the people were assembled for the mass, commanded silence
through a deacon, and said: 'I conjure you, men and women who are here
present, keep for me an assured fidelity, and do not kill me as you have
lately killed my brothers. Allow me to live at least two or three years,
that I may educate my young nephews, for fear that, after my death, it
should happen that you should perish with these children, since there
will remain of all my family no man strong enough to defend you.'"

Nevertheless, he had the courage to raise doubts as to the legitimacy of
Fredegonde's son, Clotaire, and to postpone his baptism till she
produced three bishops and three hundred other witnesses in his favor.
Brunehaut's son, Childebert, was threatening the queen with an armed
force; he and Gontran agreed to be each the other's heir in case they
died without children, and on Gontran's death Childebert endeavored to
take possession of Clotaire's domains also. Fredegonde had him poisoned:
the dreary series of civil war and family murders began again; Clotaire
II became in the end sole king of the Franks, and his mother died in her
bed, "full of years." Her rival, Brunehaut, less fortunate, betrayed