[2-10] The likeness was afterwards taken up by legend, and the walls of Angoulême, after the battle of Poitiers, are said to have fallen at the sound of the trumpets of Clovis. "A miracle," says Gibbon, "which may be reduced to the supposition that some clerical engineer had secretly undermined the foundations of the rampart." I cannot too often warn my honest readers against the modern habit of "reducing" all history whatever to 'the supposition that'....etc., etc. The legend is of course the natural and easy expression of a metaphor.
[2-11] When?—for this tradition, as well as that of the vase, points to a friendship between Clovis and St. Remy, and a singular respect on the King's side for the Christians of Gaul, though he was not yet himself converted.
[2-12] It is a curious proof of the want in vulgar historians of the slightest sense of the vital interest of anything they tell, that neither in Gibbon, nor in Messrs. Bussey and Gaspey, nor in the elaborate 'Histoire des Villes de France,' can I find, with the best research my winter's morning allows, what city was at this time the capital of Burgundy, or at least in which of its four nominal capitals,—Dijon, Besancon, Geneva, and Vienne,—Clotilde was brought up. The evidence seems to me in favour of Vienne—(called always by Messrs. B. and G., 'Vienna,' with what effect on the minds of their dimly geographical readers I cannot say)—the rather that Clotilde's mother is said to have been "thrown into the Rhone with a stone round her neck." The author of the introduction to 'Bourgogne' in the 'Histoire des Villes' is so eager to get his little spiteful snarl at anything like religion anywhere, that he entirely forgets the existence of the first queen of France,—never names her, nor, as such, the place of her birth,—but contributes only to the knowledge of the young student this beneficial quota, that Gondeband, "plus politique que guerrier, trouva an milieu de ses controverses théologiques avec Avitus, évêque de Vienne, le temps de faire mourir ses trois frères et de recueillir leur heritage."
The one broad fact which my own readers will find it well to remember is that Burgundy, at this time, by whatever king or victor tribe its inhabitants may be subdued, does practically include the whole of French Switzerland, and even of the German, as far east as Vindonissa:—the Reuss, from Vindonissa through Lucerne to the St. Gothard being its effective eastern boundary; that westward—it meant all Jura, and the plains of the Saone; and southward, included all Savoy and Dauphiné. According to the author of 'La Suisse Historique' Clotilde was first addressed by Clovis's herald disguised as a beggar, while she distributed alms at the gate of St. Pierre at Geneva; and her departure and pursued flight into France were from Dijon.
[2-13] Viz., Chapters I. and II., and the separate travellers' edition of Chapter IV.
[2-14] The first plate for the Bible of Amiens, curiously enough, failed in the engraving; and I shall probably have to etch it myself. It will be issued with the fourth, in the full-size edition of the fourth chapter.