"Ah! Is their King dead?"
"He died more than two months ago—on the 25th of November of last year, of the year 512 of the 'Incarnation of the Word,' as the bishops say who blessed and gave sepulchre to the crowned murderer in the basilica of the Holy Apostles at Paris."
"Ah! He is dead, that Frankish King! And what was his name?"
"He had a devil of a name, Hlode-Wig."
"It must choke one to pronounce it—"
"Hlode-Wig was his name. His wife, whom they call the Queen, is no less happily endowed—her name is Chrotechild—and her four children are named Chlotachaire, Theudeber—"
"Enough! Friend peddler! A truce of those savage names! Those who wear them are worthy of them."
"Right you are, as you may judge by the deceased Hlode-Wig, or Clovis, as he is popularly pronounced; and his family bids fair to surpass even him. Imagine gathered in that monster, whom St. Remi baptised a son of the Church—imagine gathered in that one monster the cunning of the fox and the cowardly ferocity of the wolf. To enumerate to you the murders that he committed with his dagger or his axe would take too long. I shall only mention some of the leading ones. An old Frankish chief, a hunchback named Sigebert, was King of Cologne. This is the way these bandits become Kings: they pillage and ravage a province at the head of a band, massacre or sell like so many heads of cattle men, women and children, reduce the rest of the inhabitants to slavery, and then they say: 'Here we are Kings'; the bishops echo back: 'Yes, our friends the Franks are Kings here; we shall baptize them into the Church; and you, people of Gaul, obey them or we will damn you!"
"And has there never been found any courageous man to plant a dagger in the heart of such a King?"
"Karadeucq, my pet, do not heat yourself in that manner. Thanks to God, that Clovis is dead. That is, at any rate, one less. Proceed, good peddler!"