xclaiming: "This is the husband thou art worthy to have!" Paulus
Diaconus, while condemning Romilda, praises the exemplary conduct of her
two chaste daughters, Appa and Gaila, who, to protect their virtue,
placed pieces of putrid meat between their breasts. This heroic measure
drove the assailants back, but unjustly secured to the entire Langobard
nation the reputation of a bad odor. Pope Hadrian evidently credited the
slander, for, when he seeks the aid of Charlemagne against Desiderius,
he writes of the "perjurious and stinking nation of the Langobards." But
our two chaste virgins escaped and were richly rewarded for their
virtue, as one was married to the Alemannian duke and the other, to the
Bavarian.

We find a curious lack of foresight related of another Langobard queen,
Hermilinda, wife of Cunipert. The queen once surprised Theodata, a
wondrously beautiful Roman slave, of patrician family, in the bath. Her
form was exquisite, her golden hair flowed down to her very feet, and
the queen could not help praising her charms to the king. The
consequence was that in due course of time Theodata gave constant
pleasure to Cunipert, and Hermilinda became an inmate of a fine
monastery named after her, where she died in the odor of sanctity.

The migration of the Teutonic peoples had been in great measure
spontaneous, it is true, but the impetus of the avalanche had
undoubtedly been tremendously increased by the irruption of a mysterious
nomad people, the Huns, who broke forth from the steppes of middle Asia
like a hurricane, hurled the Alans to the ground, overpowered the
Ostrogoths, pushed the Visigoths over the Danube into the eastern Roman
Empire, and, occupying the Roman province of Pannonia (Hungary), made it
the centre of an empire which, though loosely connected, extended, more
or less, over the length and breadth of Europe. About the middle of the
fifth century the Huns arose anew from their Pannonian seat, and again
threw Europe in a turmoil. The moving spirit of that commotion of
savagery and barbarity which seemed to shake the three continents known
to antiquity was Attila, called Etzel in the German lays and sagas, the
"scourge of God" (_Godegisel_). His hordes were estimated at more than
half a million warriors. His death was an event of immense political
significance, and appears in the German saga in many romantic forms. The
historian Jordanes relates, after Priscus, that Attila died suddenly of
violence duri