CHAPTER I.
IN THE TOWER-ROOM.
"Long live he who loves the Franks! May Christ uphold their empire! May He enlighten their chiefs and fill them with grace! May He protect the army, may He fortify the faith, may He grant peace and happiness to those who govern them under the auspices of our Lord Jesus Christ!"
By the faith of a Vagre! That passage from the prelude to the Salic Law always recurs to the mind when Frankish kings or queens are on the tapis. Let us enter the lair of Brunhild—splendid lair! Not rustic is this burg, like Neroweg's, the large burg that we old Vagres reduced to ashes! No; this great Queen has a refined taste. One of her passions is for architecture. The noble woman loves the ancient arts of Greece and Italy. Aye, she loves art! Regale your sight with the magnificent castle that she built at Chalon-on-the-Saone, the capital of Burgundy. Magnificent as are all her other castles, none, not even that of Bourcheresse, can compare with her royal residence, the superb gardens of which stretch to the very banks of the Saone. It is a palace at once gorgeous and martial. In these days of incessant feuds, kings and seigneurs always turn their homes into fortifications. So also did Brunhild. Her palace is girt by thick walls, flanked with massive towers. One only entrance—a vaulted passage closed at its two extremities by enormous iron-barred doors—leads within. Night and day Brunhild's men-at-arms mount guard in the vault. In the inside courtyards are numerous other lodges for horsemen and footmen. The halls of the palace are vast; they are paved in marble or in mosaics, and are ornamented with colonnades of jasper, porphyry and alabaster surmounted with capitals of gilded bronze. These architectural wonders, masterpieces of art, the spoils of the temples and palaces of Gaul, were transported with the help of an immense number of relays of slaves and beasts of burden from their original and distant sites to the palace of the Queen. These vast and gorgeous halls, which are furthermore stored with massive ivory, gold and silver furniture, with exquisitely wrought pagan statues, with precious vases and tripods, are but vestibules to the private chamber of Brunhild. The sun has just risen. The spacious halls are filling with the Queen's domestic slaves, with officers of her troops, with high dignitaries of her establishment—chamberlains, equerries, stewards, constables—all coming to receive their mistress's orders.
A circular apartment, contrived into one of the towers of the palace, connects with the chamber that the Queen habitually inhabits. The walls are pierced by three doors—one leads to the hall where the officers of the palace are in waiting; another into Brunhild's bedroom; the third, a simple bay closed by a curtain of gilded leather, opens upon a spiral staircase that is built into the hollow of the wall itself. The Queen's chamber is sumptuously furnished. Upon a table, covered with a richly embroidered tapestry, lie rolls of white parchment beside a solid coffer studded with precious stones. Around the table a number of chairs are arranged, all of which are furnished with soft purple cushions. Here and there the shafts of pillars serve as pedestals for vases of jasper, of onyx, or of Corinthian bronze, a material more precious than gold or red alabaster. Upon an antique green plinth rests a group exquisitely wrought in Parisian marble and representing the pagan god of Love caressing Venus. Not far from that group, two statues of bronze that age has turned green represent the obscene figures of a fawn and a nymph. Between these two masterpieces of pagan art, a picture painted upon wood and brought at great expense from Byzantium, represents the infant Christ and John the Baptist, the latter also as a child. This picture of holiness indicates that Queen Brunhild is a fervent Catholic. Does she not carry on a regular correspondence with the Pope of Rome, the pious Gregory, who can not bestow too many blessings upon his holy daughter in Christ? Further away, upon yonder ivory stand, is an elaborately carved case in which large Roman and Gallic medals of silver and gold are displayed. Among these medals is one of bronze, the only one of that metal in the collection. What does it represent?
What! Here! In a place like this! That august, that venerated face! O, profanation!
Oh, never was the place or time more opportune for a miracle than here and now, in order to terrify evildoers! That bronze effigy should shudder with horror at the place in which it finds itself.
An elderly and richly clad woman, of stony, cynic and wily countenance, steps from Brunhild's bedroom and enters the apartment in the tower. The woman, of noble Frankish extraction and Chrotechilde by name, has long been the confidante in all the Queen's crimes and debaucheries. She steps to a bell, rings it and waits. Shortly after, another old woman appears at the door that opens upon the spiral staircase in the wall. Her extremely simple costume announces that she is of inferior rank.