Page:History of the Franks.djvu/119

 THE FOURTH BOOK 87 [22. The four sons of Clothar make "a lawful division" of his kingdom. To Charibert is assigned Paris for his capital, to Gimthram, Orleans, to Chilperic, Soissons, to Sigibert, Rheims. 23. The Huns attack Sigibert and Chilperic takes the opportunity to seize some of his cities. Sigibert recovers them.] 24. When king Gunthram had taken his part of the realm like his brothers, he removed the patrician Agricola and gave the office of patrician to Celsus, a man of tall stature, strong shoulders, strong arms and boastful words, ready in retort and skilled in the law. And then such a greed for possessing came upon him that he often took the property of the churches and made it his own. Once when he heard a passage from the prophet Isaiah being read in the church, which says: ''Woe to those who join house to house and unite field to field even to the boundaries of the place," he is said to have exclaimed : ''It is out of place to say ; woe to me and my sons." But he left a son who died without children and left the greater part of his property to the churches which his father had plundered. 25. The good king Gunthram first took a concubine Veneranda, a slave belonging to one of his people, by whom he had a son Gun- dobad. Later he married Marcatrude, daughter of Magnar, and sent his son Gundobad to Orleans. But after she had a son Mar- catrude was jealous, and proceeded to bring about Gundobad's death. She sent poison, they say, and poisoned his drink. And upon his death, by God's judgment she lost the son she had and incurred the hate of the king, was dismissed by him, and died not long after. After her he took Austerchild, also named Bobilla. He had by her two sons, of whom the older was called Clothar and the younger Chlodomer. 26. Moreover king Charibert married Ingoberga, by whom he had a daughter who afterwards married a husband in Kent and was taken there. At that time Ingoberga had in her service two daughters of a certain poor man, of whom the first was called Marcovefa, who wore the robe of a nun, and the other was Merofled. The king was very much in love with them. They were, as I have said, the daughters of a worker in wool. Ingoberga was jealous that they were loved by the king and secretly gave the father work to do, thinking that when the king saw this he would dislike his