Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/114

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THE BIBLE OF AMIENS.

motives none assigned, nor authorities. Clotilde herself was pursued on her way to France, [1] and the litter in which she travelled captured, with part of her marriage portion. But the princess herself mounted on horseback, and rode, with part of her escort, forward into France, "ordering her attendants to set fire to everything that pertained to her uncle and his subjects which they might meet with on the way."

51. The fact is not chronicled, usually, among the sayings or doings of the Saints: but the punishment of Kings by destroying the property of their subjects, is too well recognized a method of modern Christian warfare to allow our indignation to burn

  1. 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 A hone 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 au milieu