plain, although all around is blackest
night."

He paused; then, at her bidding, proceeded again:

"I see an immense concourse of wild animals--the lion, the tiger,
the spotted pard, the elephant, the unicorn--ah! they are coming this
way--they will devour us!" and he turned to flee in great terror.

Basina bade him stay in peremptory tones and again to look out over the
plain. In a voice of alarm he cried out:

"I see bears and wolves, jackals and hyenas. Heaven help us, the others
are all gone!"

Heedless of his terror, the queen bade him look again and, for the last
time, tell her what he saw.

"I see now dogs and cats and little creatures of all kinds. But there is
one small animal--smaller than a mouse--who commands them all. Ah! he is
eating them up--swallowing them all--one after another."

As he looked the light, the plain, the animals all vanished, and
darkness fell. Basina then read to him the meaning of his vision.

"The first vision you saw indicated the character of our immediate
successors. They will be as bold as lions, terrible as tigers, strong
as elephants, uncommon as unicorns, beautiful as the pard. These are the
men of an age; for a century shall they rule over the land."

At this Childeric was delighted and ejaculated a fervent "Praise be to
the gods!"

"The second," pursued Basina, "are the men of the following century--our
more remote descendants--rude as the bear, fell as the wolf, fawning
as the jackal, cruel as the hyena--the curse of their people
and--themselves. The last one--the following century--they will be weak,
timid, irresolute--the prey of every base and low thing, the victims of
violence, deceit, and cunning; vanquished and destroyed at last by the
smallest of their own subjects."

Such was Childeric's vision and his queen's interpretation.

As she had predicted, the Merovingian dynasty lasted three hundred
years, when it was overturned by one Pepin of Heristal, the smallest man
of his day--at least, so tradition tells.

At the death of Clovis his sons split up the kingdom, and from that
epoch a deadly war was waged between the rival kingdoms of Neustria and
Austrasia, the west and the east.

The wars of Neustria and Austrasia (Ost Reich, the Eastern Kingdom,
which has, of course, no connexion with the modern Austria) are related
by Gregory of Tours in his Ecclesiastical History of the Franks, one of
the most brilliant pieces of historical and biographical writing t