Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the Musee des Antiquitcs. Here you will see some of the characteristically shaped bronze axe-heads of the period; but by far the larger part of what is left is woman's gear. Beside the axes there are a few lance and arrow-heads; but the finger rings (still on the bones that wore them) are numerous; there are necklaces too, and bracelets; nails and buttons, styles for writing, pins, needles, combs, and pottery. By such pitiful trifles that have survived the pride and strength of all their owners, you may be fitly introduced to the next chapter in the pageant of historic Rouen, the tale of Fredegond and Brunhilda. CHAPTER III Merovingian Rouen Consurgit pater in filimn. filius in patrem, inter in fratrem, proximus in propinquum. IITERALLY not one stone remains in Rouen to which 1 can point you as a witness of the tragedy in which the names of Fredegond and Brunhilda will always live. Yet the part of their tragedy which was played in Rouen must be told, if you are clearly to fashion for yourself that web of many faded colours which is to be the background for the first figures recognisable as flesh and blood, the northern pirates. It is a story which points as clearly to the downfall of Merovingian society and the coming of a new race, as ever any tale of Rome's decline and fall pointed to the coming of the barbarians. After the death of King Hlothair, the last man of the blood of the great Hlodowig, or Clovis, whose Prankish warriors had driven the Romans out of Gaul, and who himself became the eldest son of the Church, his kingdom had been divided among his four sons, of whom the eldest died in possession of the lands of Bordeaux; and left his treasure to be taken by the next brother, Gunthram, and his lands to be divided among all three of the surviving heirs. ...