the Catholics, priesthood or laity, labored
undoubtedly to push it forward, while the Burgundian Arians exerted
themselves to prevent it.

Thus there took place between opposing influences, religious and
national, a most animated struggle. No astonishment can be felt, then,
at the obstacles the marriage encountered, at the complications mingled
with it, and at the indirect means employed on both sides to cause its
success or failure. The account of Fredegaire is but a picture of this
struggle and its incidents, a little amplified or altered by imagination
or the credulity of the period; but the essential features of the
picture, the disguise of Aurelian, the hurry of Clotilde, the prudent
recollection of Aridius, Gondebaud's alternations of fear and violence,
and Clotilde's vindictive passion when she is once out of danger--there
is nothing in all this out of keeping with the manners of the time or
the position of the actors. Let it be added that Aurelian and Aridius
are real personages who are met with elsewhere in history, and whose
parts as played on the occasion of Clotilde's marriage are in harmony
with the other traces that remain of their lives.

The consequences of the marriage justified before long the importance
which had on all sides been attached to it. Clotilde had a son; she was
anxious to have him baptized, and urged her husband to consent. "The
gods you worship," said she, "are naught, and can do naught for
themselves or others; they are of wood or stone or metal." Clovis
resisted, saying: "It is by the command of our gods that all things are
created and brought forth. It is plain that your God hath no power;
there is no proof even that he is of the race of the gods." But Clotilde
prevailed; and she had her son baptized solemnly, hoping that the
striking nature of the ceremony might win to the faith the father whom
her words and prayers had been powerless to touch. The child soon died,
and Clovis bitterly reproached the Queen, saying: "Had the child been
dedicated to my gods he would be alive; he was baptized in the name of
your God, and he could not live." Clotilde defended her God and prayed.
She had a second son who was also baptized, and fell sick. "It cannot be
otherwise with him than with his brother," said Clovis; "baptized in the
name of your Christ, he is going to die." But the child was cured, and
lived; and Clovis was pacified and less incredulous of Christ.

An event then came to pass which