Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/88

52 Readings in European History Those of discerning mind among his men answered, " O glorious king, all things which we see are thine, and we our- selves are subject to thy power ; now do what seems pleasing to thee, for none is strong enough to resist thee." When they had thus spoken one of the soldiers, impetuous, envious, and vain, raised his battle-ax aloft and crushed the vase with it, crying, " Thou shalt receive nothing of this unless a just lot give it to thee." At this all were stupefied. The king bore his injury with the calmness of patience, and when he had received the crushed vase he gave it to the bishop's messenger; but he cherished a hidden wound in his breast. When a year had passed he ordered the whole army to come fully equipped to the Campus Martius and show their arms in brilliant array. But when he had reviewed them all he came to the breaker of the vase, and said to him, " No one bears his arms so clumsily as thou ; for neither thy spear, nor thy sword, nor thy ax is ready for use." And seizing his ax, he cast it on the ground. And when the soldier had bent a little to pick it up the king raised his hands and crushed his head with his own ax. " Thus," he said, " didst thou to the vase at Soissons." The conver- [Clovis took to wife Clotilde, daughter of the king of the sionofciovis Burgundians. Now Clotilde was a Christian. When her first son was born] she wished to consecrate him by bap- tianity. tism, and begged her husband unceasingly, saying, "The gods whom thou honorest are nothing; they cannot help themselves nor others; for they are carved from stone, or from wood, or from some metal. The names which you have given them were of men, not of gods, like Saturn, who is said to have escaped by flight, to avoid being deprived of his power by his son ; and like Jupiter himself, foul perpe- trator of all uncleanness. . . . What power have Mars and Mercury ever had ? They are endowed with magical arts rather than divine power. " The God who should be worshiped is he who by his word created from nothingness the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them is; he who made the sun to