| ST. LEO HALTING ATTILA AT THE GATES OF ROME |
IV
Shortly after leaving Italy Attila suddenly died. Only the day before his death he had married a beautiful woman whom he loved very much.
The Huns mourned their king in a barbarous way. They shaved their heads and cut themselves on their faces with knives, so that their blood, instead of their tears, flowed for the loss of their great leader. They enclosed his body in three coffins—one of gold, one of silver, and one of iron—and they buried him at night, in a secret spot in the mountains. When the funeral was over, they killed the slaves who had dug the grave, as the Visigoths had done after the burial of Alaric.
After the death of Attila we hear little more of the Huns.
GENSERIC THE VANDAL
KING FROM 427-477 A.D.
I
The Vandals were another wild and fierce tribe that came from the shores of the Baltic and invaded central and southern Europe in the later times of the Roman Empire.
In the fifth century some of these people occupied a region in the south of Spain. One of their most celebrated kings was name Gen'ser-ic. He became king in 427, when he was but twenty-one years of age. He was lame in one leg and looked as if he were a very ordinary person.