Historic Girls
by E.S. Brooks
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

STORIES OF GIRLS WHO HAVE INFLUENCED THE
HISTORY OF THEIR TIMES

E. S. BROOKS

PREFACE.

In these progressive days, when so much energy and discussion are
devoted to what is termed equality and the rights of woman, it is
well to remember that there have been in the distant past women,
and girls even, who by their actions and endeavors proved
themselves the equals of the men of their time in valor,
shrewdness, and ability.

This volume seeks to tell for the girls and boys of to-day the
stories of some of their sisters of the long-ago,--girls who by
eminent position or valiant deeds became historic even before
they had passed the charming season of girlhood.

Their stories are fruitful of varying lessons, for some of these
historic girls were wilful as well as courageous, and mischievous
as well as tender-hearted.

But from all the lessons and from all the morals, one truth
stands out most clearly--the fact that age and country, time and
surroundings, make but little change in the real girl-nature,
that has ever been impulsive, trusting, tender, and true, alike
in the days of the Syrian Zenobia and in those of the modern
American school-girl.

After all, whatever the opportunity, whatever the limitation,
whatever the possibilities of this same never-changing
girl-nature, no better precept can be laid down for our own
bright young maidens, as none better can be deduced from the
stories herewith presented, than that phrased in Kingsley's noble
yet simple verse:

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever
      Do noble things, not dream them, all day long
  And so make life, death, and the vast forever
      One grand, sweet song."

Grateful acknowledgment is made by the author for the numerous
expressions of interest that came to him from his girl-readers as
the papers now gathered into book-form appeared from time to time
in the pages of St. Nicholas. The approval of those for whom one
studies and labors is the pleasantest and most enduring return.

CONTENTS

ZENOBIA OF PALMYRA: THE GIRL OF THE SYRIAN DESERT

HELENA OF BRITAIN: THE GIRL OF THE ESSEX FELLS

PULCHERIA OF CONSTANTINOPLE: THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN HORN

CLOTILDA OF BURGUNDY: THE GIRL OF THE FRENCH VINEYARDS

WOO OF HWANG-HO: THE GIRL OF THE YELLOW RIVER

EDITH OF SCOTLAND: THE GIRL OF THE NORTHERN ABBEY

JACQUELINE OF HOLLAND: THE GIRL OF THE LAND OF FOGS

CATARINA OF VENICE: THE GIRL OF THE GRAND CANAL

THERESA OF AVILA: THE GIRL OF THE SPANISH SIERRAS

ELIZABETH OF TUDOR: THE GIRL OF THE HERTFORD MANOR

CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN: THE GIRL OF THE NORTHERN FIORDS

MA-TA-OKA OF POW-HA-TAN: THE GIRL OF THE VIRGINIA FORESTS

ZENOBIA OF PALMYRA:

THE GIRL OF THE SYRIAN DESERT.

[Afterward known as "Zenobia Augusta, Queen of the East."] A.D.
250.

MANY and many miles and many days' journey toward the rising sun,
over seas and mountains and deserts,--farther to the east than
Rome, or Constantinople, or even Jerusalem and old
Damascus,--stand the ruins of a once mighty city, scattered over
a mountain-walled oasis of the great Syrian desert, thirteen
hundred feet above the sea, and just across the northern border
of Arabia. Look for it in your geographies. It is known as
Palmyra. To-day the jackal prowls through its deserted streets
and the lizard suns himself on its fallen columns, while thirty
or forty miserable Arabian huts huddle together in a small corner
of what was once the great court-yard of the magnificent Temple
of the Sun.

And yet, sixteen centuries ago, Palmyra, or Tadmor as it was
originally called, was one of the most beautiful cities in the
world. Nature and art combined to make it glorious. Like a
glittering mirage out of the sand-swept desert arose its palaces
and temples and grandly sculptured archways. With aqueducts and
monuments and gleaming porticos with countless groves of
palm-trees and gardens full of verdure; with wells and fountains,
market and circus; with broad streets stretching away to the city
gates and lined on either side with magnificent colonnades of
rose-colored marble--such was Palmyra in the year of our Lord
250, when, in the soft Syrian month of Nisan, or April, in an
open portico in the great colonnade and screened from the sun by
gayly colored awnings, two young people--a boy of sixteen and a
girl of twelve--looked down upon the beautiful Street of the
Thousand Columns, as lined with bazaars and thronged with
merchants it stretched from the wonderful Temple of the Sun to
the triple Gate-way of the Sepulchre, nearly a mile away.

Both were handsome and healthy--true children of old Tadmor, that
glittering, fairy-like city which, Arabian legends say, was built
by the genii for the great King Solomon ages and ages ago. Midway
between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, it was the
meeting-place for the caravans from the east and the wagon trains
from the west, and it had thus become a city of merchant princes,
a wealthy commercial republic, like Florence and Venice in the
middle ages--the common toll-gate for both the East and West.

But, though a tributary colony of Rome, it was so remote a
dependency of that mighty mistress of the world that the yoke of
vassalage was but carelessly worn and lightly felt. The great
merchants and chiefs of caravans who composed its senate and
directed its affairs, and whose glittering statues lined the
sculptured cornice of its marble colonnades, had more power and
influence than the far-off Emperor at Rome, and but small heed
was paid to the slender garrison that acted as guard of honor to
the strategi or special officers who held the colony for Rome and
received its yearly tribute. And yet so strong a force was Rome
in the world that even this free-tempered desert city had
gradually become Romanized in manners as in name, so that Tadmor
had become first Adrianapolis and then Palmyra. And this
influence had touched even these children in the portico. For
their common ancestor--a wealthy merchant of a century
before--had secured honor and rank from the Emperor Septimus
Severus --the man who "walled in" England, and of whom it was
said that "he never performed an act of humanity or forgave a
fault." Becoming, by the Emperor's grace, a Roman citizen, this
merchant of Palmyra, according to a custom of the time, took the
name of his royal patron as that of his own "fahdh," or family,
and the father of young Odhainat in the portico, as was Odhainat
himself, was known as Septimus Odaenathus, while the young girl
found her Arabic name of Bath Zabbai, Latinized into that of
Septima Zenobia.

But as, thinking nothing of all this, they looked lazily on the
throng below, a sudden exclamation from the lad caused his
companion to raise her flashing black eyes inquiringly to his
face.

"What troubles you, my Odhainat?" she asked.

"There, there; look there, Bath Zabbai!" replied the boy
excitedly; "coming through the Damascus arch, and we thought him
to be in Emesa."

The girl's glance followed his guiding finger, but even as she
looked a clear trumpet peal rose above the din of the city, while
from beneath a sculptured archway that spanned a colonnaded
cross-street the bright April sun gleamed down upon the standard
of Rome with its eagle crest and its S. P. Q. R. design beneath.
There is a second trumpet peal, and swinging into the great
Street of the Thousand Columns, at the head of his light-armed
legionaries, rides the centurion Rufinus, lately advanced to the
rank of tribune of one of the chief Roman cohorts in Syria. His
coming, as Odhainat and even the young Bath Zabbai knew, meant a
stricter supervision of the city, a re-enforcement of its
garrison, and the assertion of the mastership of Rome over this
far eastern province on the Persian frontier.

"But why should the coming of the Roman so trouble you, my
Odhainat?" she asked. "We are neither Jew nor Christian that we
should fear his wrath, but free Palmyreans who bend the knee
neither to Roman nor Persian masters."

"Who WILL bend the knee no longer, be it never so little, my
cousin," exclaimed the lad hotly, "as this very day would have
shown had not this crafty Rufinus--may great Solomon's genii dash
him in the sea!--come with his cohort to mar our measures! Yet
see--who cometh now?" he cried; and at once the attention of the
young people was turned in the opposite direction as they saw,
streaming out of the great fortress-like court-yard of the Temple
of the Sun, another hurrying throng.

Then young Odhainat gave a cry of joy.

"See, Bath Zabbai; they come, they come"! he cried. "It is my
father, Odhainat the esarkos,[1] with all the leaders and all the
bowmen and spearmen of our fahdh armed and in readiness. This day
will we fling off the Roman yoke and become the true and
unconquered lords of Palmyra. And I, too, Must join them," he
added.

[1] The "head man," or chief of the "fahdh," or family.

But the young girl detained him. "Wait, cousin," she said; "watch
and wait. Our fahdh will scarce attempt so brave a deed to-day,
with these new Roman soldiers in our gates. That were scarcely
wise.

But the boy broke out again. "So; they have seen each other," he
said; "both sides are pressing on!"

"True; and they will meet under this very portico," said Bath
Zabbai, and moved both by interest and desire this dark-eyed
Syrian girl, to whom fear was never known, standing by her
cousin's side, looked down upon the tossing sea of spears and
lances and glittering shields and helmets that swayed and surged
in the street below.

"So, Odaenathus!" said Rufinus, the tribune, reining in his horse
and speaking in harsh and commanding tones, "what meaneth this
array of armed followers?"

"Are the movements of Septimus Odaenathus, the head-man, of such
importance to the noble tribune that he must needs question a
free merchant of Palmyra as to the number and manner of his
servants?" asked Odaemathus haughtily.

"Dog of a Palmyrean; slave of a camel-driver," said the Roman
angrily, "trifle not with me. Were you ten times the free
merchant you claim, you should not thus reply. Free, forsooth!
None are free but Romans."

"Have a care, O Rufinus," said the Palmyrean boldly, "choose
wiser words if you would have peaceful ways. Palmyra brooks no
such slander of her foremost men."

"And Rome brooks no such men as you, traitor," said Rufinus. "Ay,
traitor, I say," he repeated, as Odaenathus started at the word.
"Think not to hide your plots to overthrow the Roman power in
your city and hand the rule to the base Sapor of Persia. Every
thing is known to our great father the Emperor, and thus doth he
reckon with traitors. Macrinus, strike!" and at his word the
short Gallic sword in the ready hand of the big German
foot-soldier went straight to its mark and Odaenathus, the
"head-man" of Palmyra, lay dead in the Street of the Thousand
Columns.

So sudden and so unexpected was the blow that the Palmyreans
stood as if stunned, unable to comprehend what had happened. But
the Roman was swift to act.

"Sound, trumpets! Down, pikes!" he cried, and as the trumpet peal
rose loud and clear, fresh legionaries came hurrying through the
Damascus arch, and the pilum[1] and spatha of Rome bore back the
shields and lances of Palmyra.

[1] The pilum was the Roman pike, and the spatha the short
single-edged Roman sword.

But, before the lowered pikes could fully disperse the crowd, the
throng parted and through the swaying mob there burst a lithe and
flying figure--a brown-skinned maid of twelve with streaming
hair, loose robe, and angry, flashing eyes. Right under the
lowered pikes she darted and, all flushed and panting, defiantly
faced the astonished Rufinus. Close behind her came an equally
excited lad who, when he saw the stricken body of his father on
the marble street, flung himself weeping upon it. But Bath
Zabbai's eyes flashed still more angrily:

"Assassin, murderer!" she cried; "you have slain my kinsman and
Odhainat's father. How dare you; how dare you!" she repeated
vehemently, and then, flushing with deeper scorn, she added:
"Roman, I hate you! Would that I were a man. Then should all
Palmyra know how----"

"Scourge these children home," broke in the stern Rufinus, "or
fetch them by the ears to their nurses and their toys. Let the
boys and girls of Palmyra beware how they mingle in the matters
of their elders, or in the plots of their fathers. Men of
Palmyra, you who to-day have dared to think of rebellion, look on
your leader here and know how Rome deals with traitors. But,
because the merchant Odaenathus bore a Roman name, and was of
Roman rank--ho, soldiers! bear him to his house, and let Palmyra
pay such honor as befits his name and station."

The struggling children were half led, half carried into the
sculptured atrium[1] of the palace of Odaenathus which, embowered
in palms and vines and wonderful Eastern plants, stood back from
the marble colonnade on the Street of the Thousand Columns. And
when in that same atrium the body of the dead merchant lay
embalmed and draped for its "long home,"[2] there, kneeling by
the stricken form of the murdered father and kinsman, and with
uplifted hand, after the vindictive manner of these fierce old
days of blood, Odaemathus and Zenobia swore eternal hatred to
Rome.

[1] The large central "living-room" of a Roman palace.

[2] The Palmyreans built great tower-tombs, beautiful in
architecture and adornment, the ruins of which still stand on the
hill slopes overlooking the old city. These they called their
"long homes," and you will find the word used in the same sense
in Ecclesiastes xii., 5.

Hatred, boys and girls, is a very ugly as it is a very headstrong
fault; but as there is a good side even to a bad habit, so there
is a hatred which may rise to the heighth of a virtue. Hatred of
vice IS virtue; hatred of tyranny is patriotism. It is this which
has led the world from slavery to freedom, from ignorance to
enlightenment, and inspired the words that have found immortality
alike above the ashes of Bradshaw the regicide and of Jefferson
the American. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

But how could a fatherless boy and girl, away off on the edge of
an Arabian desert, hope to resist successfully the mighty power
of Imperial Rome? The story of their lives will tell.

If there are some people who are patriots, there are others who
are poltroons, and such a one was Hairan, the elder brother of
young Odhainat, when, succeeding to his dead father's wealth and
power, he thought less of Roman tyranny than of Roman gold.

"Revenge ourselves on their purses, my brother, and not on their
pikes," he said. " 'T is easier and more profitable to sap the
Roman's gold than to shed the Roman's blood."

But this submission to Rome only angered Odhainat, and to such a
conflict of opinion did it lead that at last Hairan drove his
younger brother from the home of his fathers, and the lad, "an
Esau among the Jacobs of Tadmor," so the record tells us, spent
his youth amid the roving Bedaween of the Arabian deserts and the
mountaineers of the Armenian hills, waiting his time.

But, though a homeless exile, the dark-eyed Bath Zabbai did not
forget him. In the palace of another kinsman, Septimus Worod, the
"lord of the markets," she gave herself up to careful study, and
hoped for the day of Palmyra's freedom. As rich in powers of mind
as in the graces of form and face, she soon became a wonderful
scholar for those distant days--mistress of four languages:
Coptic, Syriac, Latin, and Greek, while the fiery temper of the
girl grew into the nobler ambitions of the maiden. But above all
things, as became her mingled Arabic and Egyptian blood--for she
could trace her ancestry back to the free chiefs of the Arabian
desert, and to the dauntless Cleopatra of Egypt,--she loved the
excitement of the chase, and in the plains and mountains beyond
the city she learned to ride and hunt with all the skill and
daring of a young Diana.

And so it came to pass that when the Emperor Valerian sent an
embassy from Rome to Ctesiphon, bearing a message to the Great
King, as Sapor, the Persian monarch, was called, the embassy
halted in Palmyra, and Septimus Hairan, now the head-man of the
city, ordered, "in the name of the senate and people of Palmyra,"
a grand venatio, or wild beast hunt, in the circus near the
Street of the Thousand Columns, in honor of his Roman guests. And
he despatched his kinsman Septimus Zabbai, the soldier, to the
Armenian hills to superintend the capture and delivery of the
wild game needed for the hunt. With a great following of slaves
and huntsmen, Zabbai the soldier departed, and with him went his
niece, Bath Zabbai, or Zenobia, now a fearless young huntress of
fifteen. Space will not permit to tell of the wonders and
excitement of that wild-beast hunt--a hunt in which none must be
killed but all must be captured without mar or wound. Such a
trapping of wolves and bears and buffaloes was there, such a
setting of nets and pitfalls for the mountain lion and the Syrian
leopard, while the Arab hunters beat, and drove, and shouted, or
lay in wait with net and blunted lance, that it was rare sport to
the fearless Zenobia, who rode her fleet Arabian horse at the
very head of the chase, and, with quick eye and practised hand,
helped largely to swell the trophies of the hunt. What girl of
to-day, whom even the pretty little jumping-mouse of Syria would
scare out of her wits, could be tempted to witness such a scene?
And yet this young Palmyrean girl loved nothing better than the
chase, and the records tell us that she was a "passionate
hunter," and that---she pursued with ardor the wild beasts of the
desert and thought nothing of fatigue or peril.

So, through dense Armenian forests and along rugged mountain
paths, down rock-strewn hill-slopes and in green, low-lying
valleys, the chase swept on: and one day, in one of the pleasant
glades which, half-sun and half-shadow, stretch away to the
Lebanon hills, young Bath Zabbai suddenly reined in her horse in
full view of one of the typical hunting scenes of those old days.
A young Arabian hunter had enticed a big mountain lion into one
of the strong-meshed nets of stout palm fibres, then used for
such purposes. His trained leopard or cheetah had drawn the beast
from his lair, and by cunning devices had led him on until the
unfortunate lion was half-entrapped. Just then, with a sudden
swoop, a great golden eagle dashed down upon the preoccupied
cheetah, and buried his talons in the leopard's head. But the
weight of his victim was more than he had bargained for; the
cheetah with a quick upward dash dislodged one of the great
bird's talons, and, turning as quickly, caught the disengaged leg
in his sharp teeth. At that instant the lion, springing at the
struggling pair, started the fastenings of the net, which,
falling upon the group, held all three prisoners. The eagle and
the lion thus ensnared sought to release themselves, but only
ensnared themselves the more, while the cunning cheetah, versed
in the knowledge of the hunter's net, crept out from beneath the
meshes as his master raised them slightly, and with bleeding head
crawled to him for praise and relief.

Then the girl, flushed with delight at this double capture,
galloped to the spot, and in that instant she recognized in the
successful hunter her cousin the exile.

"Well snared, my Odhainat," she said, as, the first exclamation
of surprise over, she stood beside the brown-faced and sturdy
young hunter. "The Palmyrean leopard hath bravely trapped both
the Roman eagle and the Persian lion. See, is it not an omen from
the gods? Face valor with valor and craft with craft, O Odhainat!
Have you forgotten the vow in your father's palace full three
years ago?"

Forgotten it? Not he. And then he told Bath Zabbai how in all his
wanderings he had kept their vow in mind, and with that, too, her
other words of counsel, "Watch and Wait." He told her that, far
and wide, he was known to all the Arabs of the desert and the
Armenians of the hills, and how, from sheikh to camel-boy, the
tribes were ready to join with Palmyra against both Rome and
Persia.

"Your time will indeed come, my Odhainat," said the fearless
girl, with proud looks and ringing voice. "See, even thus our
omen gives the proof," and she pointed to the net, beneath whose
meshes both eagle and lion, fluttering and panting, lay wearied
with their struggles, while the cheetah kept watch above them.
"Now make your peace with Hairan, your brother; return to Palmyra
once again, and still let us watch and wait."

Three more years passed. Valerian, Emperor of Rome, leading his
legions to war with Sapor, whom men called the "Great King," had
fallen a victim to the treachery and traps of the Persian
monarch, and was held a miserable prisoner in the Persian
capital, where, richly robed in the purple of the Roman emperors
and loaded with chains, he was used by the savage Persian tyrant
as a living horse-block for the sport of an equally savage court.
In Palmyra, Hairan was dead, and young Odhainat, his brother, was
now Septimus Odaenathus--"headman" of the city and to all
appearances the firm friend of Rome.

There were great rejoicings in Palmyra when the wise
Zenobia--still scarce more than a girl--and the fearless young
"head-man" of the desert republic were married in the marble city
of the palm-trees, and her shrewd counsels brought still greater
triumphs to Odaenathus and to Palmyra,

In the great market-place or forum, Odaenathus and Zenobia
awaited the return of their messengers to Sapor. For the "Great
King," having killed and stuffed the captive Roman Emperor, now
turned his arms against the Roman power in the east and,
destroying both Antioch and Emesa, looked with an evil eye toward
Palmyra. Zenobia, remembering the omen of the eagle and the lion,
repeated her counsel of facing craft with craft, and letters and
gifts had been sent to Sapor, asking for peace and friendship.
There is a hurried entrance through the eastern gate of the city,
and the messengers from the Palmyrean senate rush into the
Market-place.

"Your presents to the Great King have been thrown into the river,
O Odaenathus," they reported, "and thus sayeth Sapor of Persia:
'Who is this Odaenathus, that he should thus presume to write to
his lord? If he would obtain mitigation of the punishment that
awaits him, let him fall prostrate before the foot of our throne,
with his hands bound behind his back. Unless he doeth this, he,
his family, and his country shall surely perish!' "

Swift to wrath and swifter still to act, Zenobia sprang to her
feet. "Face force with force, Odaenathus. Be strong and sure, and
Palmyra shall yet humble the Persian."

Her advice was taken. Quickly collecting the troops of Palmyra
and the Arabs and Armenian who were his allies, the fearless
"head-man" fell upon the army of the haughty Persian king,
defeated and despoiled it, and drove it back to Persia. As
Gibbon, the historian says: "The majesty of Rome, oppressed by a
Persian, was protected by an Arab of Palmyra."

For this he was covered with favors by Rome; made supreme
commander in the East, and, with Zenobia as his adviser and
helper, each year made Palmyra stronger and more powerful.

Here, rightly, the story of the girl Zenobia ends. A woman now,
her life fills one of the most brilliant pages of history. While
her husband conquered for Rome in the north, she, in his absence,
governed so wisely in the south as to insure the praise of all.
And when the time was ripe, and Rome, ruled by weak emperors and
harassed by wild barbarians, was in dire stress, the childish vow
of the boy and girl made years before found fulfilment. Palmyra
was suddenly declared free from the dominion of Rome, and
Odaenathus was acknowledged by senate and people as "Emperor and
King of kings."

But the hand of an assassin struck down the son as it had
stricken the father. Zenobia, ascending the throne of Palmyra,
declared herself "Zenobia Augusta, the Empress of the East," and,
after the manner of her time, extended her empire in every
direction until, as the record says: "A small territory in the
desert, under the government of a woman, extended its conquests
over many rich countries and several states. Zenobia, lately
confined to the barren plains about Palmyra, now held sway from
Egypt in the south, to the Bosphorus and the Black Sea in the
north."

But a new emperor ruled in Rome: Aurelian, soldier and statesman.
"Rome," he said, "shall never lose a province." And then the
struggle for dominion in the East began. The strength and power
of Rome, directed by the Emperor himself, at last triumphed.
Palmyra fell, and Zenobia, after a most heroic defence of her
kingdom, was led a prisoner to Rome. Clad in magnificent robes,
loaded with jewels and with heavy chains of gold, she walked,
regal and undaunted still, in the great triumphal procession of
her conqueror, and, disdaining to kill herself as did Cleopatra
and Dido, she gave herself up to the nobler work of the education
and culture of her children, and led for many years, in her villa
at Tibur, the life of a noble Roman matron.

Such, in brief, is the story of Zenobia. You must read for
yourselves the record of her later years, as it stands in
history, if you would know more of her grandeur in her days of
power, and her moral grandeur in her days of defeat.

And with Zenobia fell Palmyra. Centuries of ruin and neglect have
passed over the once fairy-like city of the Syrian oasis. Her
temples and colonnades, her monuments and archways and wonderful
buildings are prostrate and decayed, and the site even of the
glorious city has been known to the modern world only within the
last century. But while time lasts and the record of heroic deeds
survives, neither fallen column nor ruined arch nor all the
destruction and neglect of modern barbarism can blot out the
story of the life and worth of Bath Zabbai, the brave girl of the
Syrian desert, whom all the world honors as the noblest woman of
antiquity--Zenobia of Palmyra, the dauntless "Queen of the East."

HELENA OF BRITAIN:

THE GIRL OF THE ESSEX FELLS.

[Afterward known as "St. Helena," the mother of Constantine.]
A.D. 255.

Ever since that far-off day in the infancy of the world, when
lands began to form and rivers to flow seaward, the little river
Colne has wound its crooked way through the fertile fields of
Essex eastward to the broad North Sea.

Through hill-land and through moor-land, past Moyns and Great
Yeldham, past Halstead and Chappel and the walls of Colchester,
turning now this way and now that until it comes to Mersea Island
and the sea, the little river flows to-day even as it sped along
one pleasant summer morning sixteen hundred and forty years ago,
when a little British princess, only fairly in her teens,
reclined in comfortable contentment in her gilded barge and
floated down the river from her father's palace at Colchester to
the strand at Wivanloe.

For this little girl of fourteen, Helena, the princess, was a
king's daughter, and, according to all accounts, a very bright
and charming girl besides--which all princesses have not been.
Her father was Coel, second prince of Britain and king of that
part of ancient England, which includes the present shires of
Essex and of Suffolk, about the river Colne.

Not a very large kingdom this, but even as small as it was, King
Coel did not hold it in undisputed sway. For he was one of the
tributary princes of Britain, in the days when Roman arms, and
Roman law, and Roman dress, and Roman manners, had place and
power throughout England, from the Isle of Wight, to the Northern
highlands, behind whose forest-crowned hills those savage natives
known as the Picts--"the tattooed folk"--held possession of
ancient Scotland, and defied the eagles of Rome.

The monotonous song of the rowers, keeping time with each dip of
the broad-bladed oars, rose and fell in answer to the beats of
the master's silver baton, and Helena too followed the measure
with the tap, tap, of her sandaled foot.

Suddenly there shot out around one of the frequent turns in the
river, the gleam of other oars, the high prow of a larger galley,
and across the water came the oar-song of a larger company of
rowers. Helena started to her feet.

"Look, Cleon," she cried, pointing, eagerly towards the
approaching boat, " 't is my father's own trireme. Why this haste
to return, think'st thou?"

"I cannot tell, little mistress," replied the freedman Cleon, her
galley-master; "the king thy father must have urgent tidings, to
make him return thus quickly to Camalodunum."

Both the girl and the galley-master spoke in Latin, for the
language of the Empire was the language of those in authority or
in official life even in its remotest provinces, and the
galley-master did but use the name which the Roman lords of
Britain had given to the prosperous city on the Colne, in which
the native Prince, King Coel, had his court--the city which
to-day is known under its later Saxon name of Colchester.

It was, indeed, a curious state of affairs in England. I doubt if
many of my girl and boy readers, no matter how, well they may
stand in their history classes, have ever thought of the England
of Hereward and Ivanhoe, of Paul Dombey and Tom Brown, as a Roman
land.

And yet at the time when this little Flavia Julia Helena was
sailing down the river Colne, the island of Britain, in its
southern section at least, was almost as Roman in manner, custom,
and speech as was Rome itself.

For nearly five hundred years, from the days of Caesar the
conqueror, to those of Honorius the unfortunate, was England, or
Britain as it was called, a Roman province, broken only in its
allegiance by the early revolts of the conquered people or by the
later usurpations of ambitious and unpincipled governors.

And, at the date of our story, in the year 255 A.D., the
beautiful island had so far grown out of the barbarisms of
ancient Britain as to have long since forgotten the gloomy rites
and open-air altars of the Druids, and all the half-savage
surroundings of those stern old priests.

Everywhere Roman temples testified to the acceptance by the
people of the gods of Rome, and little Helena herself each
morning hung the altar of the emperor-god Claudius with garlands
in the stately temple which had been built in his honor in her
father's palace town, asked the protection of Cybele, "the
Heavenly Virgin," and performed the rites that the Empire
demanded for "the thousand gods of Rome."

Throughout the land, south of the massive wall which the great
Emperor Hadrian had stretched across the island from the mouth of
the Solway to the mouth of the Tyne, the people themselves who
had gathered into or about the thirty growing Roman cities which
the conquerors had founded and beautified, had become Roman in
language, religion, dress, and ways, while the educational
influences of Rome, always following the course of her conquering
eagles, had planted schools and colleges throughout the land, and
laid the foundation for that native learning which in later years
was to make the English nation so great and powerful.

And what a mighty empire must have been that of Rome that, in
those far-off days, when rapid transit was unknown, and steam and
electricity both lay dormant, could have entered into the lives
of two bright young maidens so many leagues removed from one
another--Zenobia, the dusky Palmyrean of the East, and Helena,
the fresh-faced English girl of the West.

But to such distant and widely separated confines had this power
of the vast Empire extended; and to this thoughtful young
princess, drifting down the winding English river, the sense of
Roman supremacy and power would come again and again.

For this charming young girl--said, later, to have been the most
beautiful woman of her time in England--though reared to Roman
ways and Roman speech, had too well furnished a mind not to think
for herself. "She spake," so says the record, "many tongues and
was replete with piety." The only child of King Coel, her doting
old father had given her the finest education that Rome could
offer. She was, even before she grew to womanhood, so we are
told, a fine musician, a marvellous worker in tapestry, in
hammered brass and pottery, and was altogether as wise and
wonderful a young woman as even these later centuries can show.

But, for all this grand education, she loved to hear the legends
and stories of her people that in various ways would come to her
ears, either as the simple tales of her British nurse, or in the
wild songs of the wandering bards, or singers.

As she listened to these she thought less of those crude and
barbaric ways of her ancestors that Rome had so vastly bettered
than of their national independence and freedom from the galling
yoke of Rome, and, as was natural, she cherished the memory of
Boadicea, the warrior queen, and made a hero of the fiery young
Caractacus.

It is always so, you know. Every bright young imagination is apt
to find greater glories in the misty past, or grander
possibilities in a still more misty future than in the too
practical and prosaic present in which both duty and destiny lie.
And so Helena the princess, Leaning against the soft cushions of
her gilded barge, had sighed for the days of the old-time British
valor and freedom, and, even as she looked off toward the
approaching triareme, she was wondering how she could awake to
thoughts of British glory her rather heavy-witted father, Coel
the King--an hereditary prince of that ancient Britain in which
he was now, alas, but a tributary prince of the all too powerful
Rome.

Now, "old King Cole," as Mother Goose tells us--for young
Helena's father was none other than the veritable "old King Cole"
of our nursery jingle--was a "jolly old soul," and a jolly old
soul is very rarely an independent or ambitious one. So long as
he could have "his pipe and his bowl" not, of course, his long
pipe of tobacco that all the Mother Goose artists insist upon
giving him--but the reed pipe upon which his musicians played--so
long, in other words, as he could live in ease and comfort,
undisturbed in his enjoyment of the good things of life by his
Roman over-lords, he cared for no change. Rome took the
responsibility and he took things easily. But this very day,
while his daughter Helena was floating down the river to meet him
on the strand at Wivanloe, he was returning from an unsuccessful
boar-hunt in the Essex woods, very much out of sorts--cross
because he had not captured the big boar he had hoped to kill,
cross because his favorite musicians had been "confiscated" by
the Roman governor or propraetor at Londinium (as London was then
called), and still more cross because he had that day received
dispatches from Rome demanding a special and unexpected tax levy,
or tribute, to meet the necessary expenses of the new Emperor
Diocletian.

Something else had happened to increase his ill temper. His
"jolly old soul," vexed by the numerous crosses of the day, was
thrown into still greater perplexity by the arrival, just as he
stood fretful and chafing on the shore at Wivanloe, of one who
even now was with him on the trireme, bearing him company back to
his palace at Camolodunum--Carausius the admiral.

This Carausius, the admiral, was an especially vigorous,
valorous, and fiery young fellow of twenty-one. He was cousin to
the Princess Helena and a prince of the blood royal of ancient
Britain. Educated under the strict military system of Rome, he
had risen to distinction in the naval force of the Empire, and
was now the commanding officer in the northern fleet that had its
central station at Gessoriacum, now Boulogne, on the northern
coast of France. He had chased and scattered the German pirates
who had so long ravaged the northern seas, had been named by the
Emperor admiral of the north, and was the especial pride, as he
was the dashing young leader, of the Roman sailors along the
English Channel and the German shores.

The light barge of the princess approached the heavier boat of
the king, her father. At her signal the oarsmen drew up
alongside, and, scarce waiting for either boat to more than
slacken speed, the nimble-footed girl sprang lightly to the deck
of her father's galley. Then bidding the obedient Cleon take her
own barge back to the palace, she hurried at once, and without
question, like the petted only child she was, into the
high-raised cabin at the stern, where beneath the Roman standards
sat her father the king.

Helena entered the apartment at a most exciting moment. For
there, facing her portly old father, whose clouded face bespoke
his troubled mind, stood her trimly-built young cousin Carausius
the admiral, bronzed with his long exposure to the sea-blasts, a
handsome young viking, and, in the eyes of the hero-loving Helen,
very much of a hero because of his acknowledged daring and his
valorous deeds.

Neither man seemed to have noticed the sudden entrance of the
girl, so deep were they in talk.

"I tell thee, uncle," the hot-headed admiral was saying, "it is
beyond longer bearing. This new emperor--this Diocletian--who is
he to dare to dictate to a prince of Britain? A foot-soldier of
Illyria, the son of slaves, and the client of three coward
emperors; an assassin, so it hath been said, who from chief of
the domestics, hath become by his own cunning Emperor of Rome,
And now hath he dared to accuse me--me, a free Briton and a Roman
citizen as well, a prince and the son of princes, with having
taken bribes from these German pirates whom I have vanquished. He
hath openly said that I, Carausius the admiral, have filled mine
own coffers while neglecting the revenues of the state. I will
not bear it. I am a better king than he, did I but have my own
just rights, and even though he be Diocletian the Emperor, he
needeth to think twice before he dare accuse a prince of Britain
with bribe-taking and perjury."

"True enough, good nephew," said King Coel, as the admiral strode
up and down before him, angrily playing with the hilt of his
short Roman sword, "true enough, and I too have little cause to
love this low-born emperor. He hath taken from me both my players
and my gold, when I can illy spare either from my comfort or my
necessities. 'T is a sad pass for Britain. But Rome is mistress
now. What may we hope to do?"

The Princess Helena sprang to her father's side, her young face
flushed, her small hand raised in emphasis. "Do!" cried she, and
the look of defiance flamed on her fair young face. "Do! Is it
thou, my father, thou, my cousin, princes of Britain both, that
ask so weak a question? O that I were a man! What did that brave
enemy of our house, Cassivellaunus, do? what Caractacus? what the
brave queen Boadicea? When the Roman drove them to despair they
raised the standard of revolt, sounded their battle cries, and
showed the Roman that British freemen could fight to the death
for their country and their home. And thus should we do, without
fear or question, and see here again in Britain a victorious
kingdom ruled once more by British kings."

"Nay, nay, my daughter," said cautious King Coel, "your words are
those of an unthinking girl. The power of Rome----"

But the Prince Carausius, as the girl's brave words rang out,
gave her an admiring glance, and, crossing to where she stood,
laid his hand approvingly upon her shoulder.

"The girl is right, uncle," he said, breaking in upon the king's
cautious speech. "Too long have we bowed the neck to Roman
tyranny. We, free princes of Britain that we are, have it even
now in our power to stand once again as altogether free. The
fleet is mine, the people are yours, if you will but amuse them.
Our brothers are groaning under the load of Roman tribute, and
are ripe to strike. Raise the cry at Camalodunum, my uncle; cry:
'Havoc and death to Rome!' My fleet shall pour its victorious
sailors upon the coast; the legions, even now full of British
fighters, shall flock to out united standards, and we shall
rule--Emperors in the North, even as do the Roman conquerors rule
Emperors in the South."

Young blood often sways and leads in council and in action,
especially when older minds are over-cautious or sluggish in
decision. The words of Carausius and Helena carried the day with
Coel the king, already smarting under a sense of ill-treatment by
his Roman over-lords.

The standard of revolt was raised in Camalodunum. The young
admiral hurried back to France to make ready his fleet, while
Coel the king, spurred on to action by the patriotic Helena, who
saw herself another Boadicea--though, in truth, a younger and
much fairer one--gathered a hasty following, won over to his
cause the British-filled legion in his palace-town, and,
descending upon the nearest Roman camps and stations, surprised,
captured, scattered, or brought over their soldiers, and
proclaimed himself free from the yoke of Rome and supreme prince
of Britain.

Ambition is always selfish. Even when striving for the general
good there lies, too often, beneath this noble motive the still
deeper one of selfishness. Carausius the admiral, though
determined upon kingly power, had no desire for a divided
supremacy. He was determined to be sole emperor, or none. Crafty
and unscrupulous, although brave and high-spirited, he deemed it
wisest to delay his part of the compact until he should see how
it fared with his uncle, the king, and then, upon his defeat, to
climb to certain victory.

He therefore sent to his uncle promises instead of men, and when
summoned by the Roman governor to assist in putting down the
revolt, he returned loyal answers, but sent his aid to neither
party.

King Coel after his first successes knew that, unaided, he could
not hope to withstand the Roman force that must finally be
brought against him. Though urged to constant action by his wise
young daughter, he preferred to do nothing; and, satisfied with
the acknowledgment of his power in and about his little kingdom
on the Colne, he spent his time in his palace with the musicians
that he loved so well, and the big bowl of liquor that he loved,
it is to be feared, quite as dearly.

The musicians--the pipers and the harpers--sang his praises, and
told of his mighty deeds, and, no doubt, their refrain was very
much the same as the one that has been preserved for us in the
jingle of Mother Goose:

     "O, none so rare as can compare
      With King Cole and his fiddlers three."

But if the pleasure-loving old king was listless, young Helena
was not. The misty records speak of her determined efforts, and
though it is hard to understand how a girl of fifteen can do any
thing toward successful generalship, much can be granted to a
young lady who, if the records speak truth, was, even while a
girl, "a Minerva in wisdom, and not deficient in statecraft."

So, while she advised with her father's boldest captains and
strengthened so wisely the walls of ancient Colchester, or
Camalodunum, that traces of her work still remain as proof of her
untiring zeal, she still cherished the hope of British freedom
and release from Rome. And the loving old king, deep in his
pleasures, still recognized the will and wisdom of his valiant
daughter, and bade his artists make in her honor a memorial that
should ever speak of her valor. And this memorial, lately
unearthed, and known as the Colchester Sphinx, perpetuates the
lion-like qualities of a girl in her teens, who dared withstand
the power of Imperial Rome.

And still no help came from her cousin, the admiral. But one day
a galley speeding up the Colne brought this unsigned message to
King Coel:

"To Coel, Camalodunum, Greeting:

"Save thyself. Constantius the sallow-faced, prefect of the
Western praetorians, is even now on his way from Spain to crush
thy revolt. Save thyself. I wait. justice will come."

"Thou seest, O daughter," said King Coel as Helena read the
craven missive, "the end cometh as I knew it would. Well, man can
but die." And with this philosophic reflection the "jolly old
soul" only dipped his red nose still deeper into his big bowl,
and bade his musicians play their loudest and merriest.

But Helena, "not deficient in statecraft," thought for both. She
would save her father, her country, and herself, and shame her
disloyal cousin. Discretion is the better part of valor. Let us
see how discreet a little lady was this fair young Princess
Helena.

The legions came to Camalodunum. Across Gaul and over the choppy
channel they came, borne by the very galleys that were to have
succored the British king. Up through the mouth of Thames they
sailed, and landing at Londinium, marched in close array along
the broad Roman road that led straight up to the gates of
Camalodunum. Before the walls of Camalodunum was pitched the
Roman camp, and the British king was besieged in his own
palace-town.

The Roman trumpets sounded before the gate of the beleaguered
city, and the herald of the prefect, standing out from his circle
of guards, cried the summons to surrender:

Coel of Britain, traitor to the Roman people and to thy lord the
Emperor, hear thou! I n the name of the Senate and People of
Rome, I, Constantius the prefect, charge thee to deliver up to
them ere this day's sun shall set, this, their City of
Camalodunum, and thine own rebel body as well. Which done they
will in mercy pardon the crime of treason to the city, and will
work their will and punishment only upon thee--the chief rebel.
And if this be not done within the appointed time, then will the
walls of this their town of Camalodunum be overthrown, and thou
and all thy people be given the certain death of traitors."

King Coel heard the summons, and some spark of that very
patriotism that had inspired and incited his valiant little
daughter flamed in his heart. He would have returned an answer of
defiance. "I can at least die with my people," he said, but young
Helena interposed.

"Leave this to me, my father," she said. "As I have been the
cause, so let me be the end of trouble. Say to the prefect that
in three hours' time the British envoy will come to his camp with
the king's answer to his summons."

The old king would have replied otherwise, but his daughter's
entreaties and the counsels of his captains who knew the
hopelessness of resistance, forced him to assent, and his herald
made answer accordingly.

Constantius the prefect--a manly, pleasant. looking young
commander, called Chlorus or "the sallow," from his pale
face,--sat in his tent within the Roman camp. The three hours'
grace allowed had scarcely expired when his sentry announced the
arrival of the envoy of Coel of Britain.

"Bid him enter," said the prefect. Then, as the curtains of his
tent were drawn aside, the prefect started in surprise, for there
before him stood, not the rugged form of a British fighting man,
but a fair young girl, who bent her graceful head in reverent
obeisance to the youthful representative of the Imperial Caesars.

"What would'st thou with me, maiden?" asked the prefect.

"I am the daughter of Coel of Britain," said the girl, "and I am
come to sue for pardon and for peace."

"The Roman people have no quarrel with the girls of Britain,"
said the prefect. "Hath then King Coel fallen so low in state
that a maiden must plead for him?"

"He hath not fallen at all, O Prefect," replied the girl proudly;
"the king, my father, would withstand thy force but that I, his
daughter, know the cause of this unequal strife, and seek to make
terms with the victors."

The girl's fearlessness pleased the prefect, for Constantius
Chlorus was a humane and gentle man, fierce enough in fight, but
seeking never to needlessly wound an enemy or lose a friend.

"And what are thy terms, fair envoy of Britain?" he demanded.

"These, O Prefect," replied Helena, "If but thou wilt remove thy
cohorts to Londinium, I pledge my father's faith and mine, that
he will, within five days, deliver to thee as hostage for his
fealty, myself and twenty children of his councillors and
captains. And further, I, Helena the princess, will bind myself
to deliver up to thee, with the hostages, the chief rebel in this
revolt, and the one to whose counselling this strife with Rome is
due."

Both the matter and the manner of the offered terms still further
pleased the prefect, and he said: "Be it so, Princess." Then
summoning his lieutenant, he said: "Conduct the envoy of Coel of
Britain with all courtesy to the gates of the the city," and with
a herald's escort the girl returned to her father.

Again the old king rebelled at the terms his daughter had made.

"I know the ways of Rome," he said. "I know what their mercy
meaneth. Thou shalt never go as hostage for my faith, O daughter,
nor carry out this hazardous plan."

"I have pledged my word and thine, O King," said Helena. "Surely
a Briton's pledge should be as binding as a Roman's."

So she carried her point, and, in five days' time, she, with
twenty of the boys and girls of Camalodunum, went as hostages to
the Roman camp in London.

"Here be thy hostages, fair Princess," said Constantius the
prefect as he received the children; "and this is well. But
remember the rest of thy compact. Deliver to me now, according to
thy promise, the chief rebel against Rome."

"She is here, O Prefect,"said the intrepid girl. I am that
rebel--Helena of Britain!"

The smile upon the prefect's face changed to sudden sternness.

"Trifle not with Roman justice, girl," he said, "I demand the
keeping of thy word."

"It is kept," replied the princess. "Helena of Britain is the
cause and motive of this revolt against Rome. If it be rebellion
for a free prince to claim his own, if it be rebellion for a
prince to withstand for the sake of his people the unjust demands
of the conqueror, if it be rebellion for one who loveth her
father to urge that father to valiant deeds in defence of the
liberties of the land over which he ruleth as king, then am I a
rebel, for I have done all these, and only because of my words
did the king, my father, take up arms against the might and power
of Rome. I am the chief rebel. Do with me as thou wilt."

And now the prefect saw that the girl spoke the truth, and that
she had indeed kept her pledge.

"Thy father and his city are pardoned," he announced after a few
moments of deliberation. "Remain thou here, thou and thy
companions, as hostages for Britain, until such time as I shall
determine upon the punishment due to one who is so fierce a rebel
against the power of Rome."

So the siege of Camalodunum was raised, and the bloodless
rebellion ended. Constantius the prefect took up his residence
for a while within King Coel's city, and at last returned to his
command in Gaul and Spain, well pleased with the spirit of the
little maiden whom, so he claimed, he still held in his power as
the prisoner of Rome.

Constantius the prefect came again to Britain, and with a greater
following, fully ten years after King Coel's revolt, for now,
again, rebellion was afoot in the island province.

Carausius the admiral, biding his time, sought at last to carry
out his scheme of sole supremacy. Sailing with his entire
war-fleet to Britain, he won the legions to his side, proclaimed
himself Emperor of Britain, and defied the power of Rome.

So daring and successful was his move that Rome for a time was
powerless. Carausius was recognized as "associate" emperor by
Rome, until such time as she should be ready to punish his
rebellion, and for seven years he reigned as emperor of Britain.

But ere this came to pass, Helena the princess had gone over to
Gaul, and had become the wife of Constantius the prefect,--"Since
only thus," said he, "may I keep in safe custody this prisoner of
Rome."

The imperial power of Carausius was but short-lived. Crafty
himself, he fell a victim to the craft of others, and the sword
of Allectus, his chief minister and most trusted confidant, ended
his life when once again the power of Rome seemed closing about
the little kingdom of Britain.

Constantius became governor of Britain, and finally caesar and
emperor. But, long before that day arrived, the Princess Helena
had grown into a loyal Roman wife and mother, dearly loving her
little son Constantine, who, in after years, became the first and
greatest Christian emperor of Rome.

She bestowed much loving care upon her native province of
Britain. She became a Christian even before her renowned son had
his historic vision of the flaming cross. When more than eighty
years old she made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There she did
many good and kindly deeds, erected temples above the Sepulchre
of the Saviour, at his birthplace at Bethlehem, and on the Mount
of Olives. She is said, also, to have discovered upon Calvary the
cross, upon which had suffered and died the Saviour she had
learned to worship.

Beloved throughout her long and useful life she was canonized
after her death, and is now recognized one of the saints of the
Romish church.

To-day in the city of London you may see the memorial church
reared to her memory--the Church of Great St. Helena, in
Bishopgate. A loving, noble, wonderful, and zealous woman, she is
a type of the brave young girlhood of the long ago, and, however
much of fiction there may be mingled with the fact of her
life-story, she was, we may feel assured, all that the
chroniclers have claimed for her--"one of the grandest women of
the earlier centuries."

PULCHERIA of CONSTANTINOPLE:

THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN HORN

[Afterward known as "Pulcheria Augusta, Empress of the East."]
A.D. 413.

There was trouble and confusion in the imperial palace of
Theodosius the Little, Emperor of the East. Now, this Theodosius
was called "the Little" because, though he bore the name of his
mighty grandfather, Theodosius the Great, emperor of both the
East and West, he had as yet done nothing worthy any other title
than that of "the Little," or "the Child." For Theodosius emperor
though he was called, was only a boy of twelve, and not a very
bright boy at that.

His father, Arcadius the emperor, and his mother, Eudoxia the
empress, were dead; and in the great palace at Constantinople, in
this year of grace, 413, Theodosius, the boy emperor, and his
three sisters, Pulcheria, Marina, and Arcadia, alone were left to
uphold the tottering dignity and the empty name of the once
mighty Empire of the East, which their great ancestors,
Constantine and Theodosius, had established and strengthened.

And now there was confusion in the imperial palace; for word came
in haste from the Dacian border that Ruas, king of the Huns,
sweeping down from the east, was ravaging the lands along the
Upper Danube, and with his host of barbarous warriors was
defeating the legions and devastating the lands of the empire.

The wise Anthemius, prefect of the east, and governor or guardian
of the young emperor, was greatly disturbed by the tidings of
this new invasion. Already he had repelled at great cost the
first advance of these terrible Huns, and had quelled into a sort
of half submission the less ferocious followers of Ulpin the
Thracian; but now he knew that his armies along the Danube were
in no condition to withstand the hordes of Huns, that, pouring in
from distant Siberia, were following the lead of Ruas, their
king, for plunder and booty, and were even now encamped scarce
two hundred and fifty miles from the seven gates and the triple
walls of splendid Constantinople.

Turbaned Turks, mosques and minarets, muftis and cadis, veiled
eastern ladies, Mohammedains and muezzins, Arabian Nights and
attar of roses, bazars, dogs, and donkeys--these, I suppose, are
what Constantinople suggests whenever its name is mentioned to
any girl or boy of to-day,--the capital of modern Turkey, the
city of the Sublime Porte. But the greatest glory of
Constantinople was away back in the early days before the time of
Mohammed, or of the Crusaders, when it was the centre of the
Christian religion, the chief and gorgeous capital of a Christian
empire, and the residence of Christian emperors,--from the days
of Constantine the conqueror to those of Justinian the law-giver
and of Irene the empress. It was the metropolis of the eastern
half of the great Roman Empire, and during this period of over
five hundred years all the wealth and treasure of the east poured
into Constantinople, while all the glories of the empire, even
the treasures of old Rome itself, were drawn upon to adorn and
beautify this rival city by the Golden Horn. And so in the days
of Theodosius the Little, the court of Constantinople, although
troubled with fear of a barbarian invasion and attack, glittered
with all the gorgeousness and display of the most magnificent
empire in the world.

In the great daphne, or central space of the imperial palace, the
prefect Anthemius, with the young emperor, the three princesses,
and their gorgeously arrayed nobles and attendants, awaited, one
day, the envoys of Ruas the Hun, who sought lands and power
within the limits of the empire.

They came, at last,--great, fierce-looking fellows, not at all
pleasant to contemplate--big-boned broad-shouldered, flat-nosed,
swarthy, and small-eyed, with war-cloaks of shaggy skins,
leathern armor, wolf-crowned helmets, and barbaric decorations,
and the royal children shrunk from them in terror, even as they
watched them with wondering curiosity. Imperial guards, gleaming
in golden armor, accompanied them, while with the envoys came
also as escort a small retinue of Hunnish spearmen. And in the
company of these, the Princess Pulcheria noted a lad of ten or
twelve years--short, swarthy, big-headed, and flat-nosed, like
his brother barbarians, but with an air of open and hostile
superiority that would not be moved even by all the glow and
glitter of an imperial court.

Then Eslaw, the chief of the envoys of King Ruas the Hun, made
known his master's demands So much land, so much treasure, so
much in the way of concession and power over the lands along the
Danube, or Ruas the king would sweep down with his warriors, and
lay waste the cities and lands of the empire.

"These be bold words," said Anthemius the prefect. "And what if
our lord the emperor shall say thee nay?"

But ere the chief of the envoys could reply, the lad whose
presence in the escort the Princess Pulcheria had noted, sprang
into the circle before the throne, brandishing his long spear in
hot defiance.

"Dogs and children of dogs, ye dare not say us nay!" he cried
harshly. "Except we be made the friends and allies of the
emperor, and are given full store of southern gold and treasure,
Ruas the king shall overturn these your palaces, and make you all
captives and slaves. It shall be war between you and us forever.
Thus saith my spear!"

And as he spoke he dashed his long spear upon the floor, until
the mosaic pavement rang again.

Boy emperor and princesses, prefect and nobles and imperial
guards, sprang to their feet as the spear clashed on the
pavement, and even the barbarian envoys, while they smiled grimly
at their young comrade's energy, pulled him hastily back.

But ere the prefect Anthemius could sufficiently master his
astonishment to reply, the young Princess Pulcheria faced the
savage envoys, and pointing to the cause of the disturbance,
asked calmly:

"Who is this brawling boy, and what doth he here in the palace of
the emperor?"

And the boy made instant and defiant answer:

"I am Attila, the son of Mundzuk, kinsman to Ruas the king, and
deadly foe to Rome."

"Good Anthemius," said the clear, calm voice of the unterrified
girl, "were it not wise to tell this wild young prince from the
northern forest that the great emperor hath gold for his friends,
but only iron for his foes? 'T is ever better to be friend than
foe. Bid, I pray, that the arras of the Hippodrome be parted, and
let our guests see the might and power of our arms."

With a look of pleased surprise at this bold stroke of the
Princess, the prefect clapped his hands in command, and the
heavily brocaded curtain that screened the gilded columns parted
as if by unseen hands, and the Hunnish envoys, with a gaze of
stolid wonder, looked down upon the great Hippodrome of
Constantinople.

It was a vast enclosure, spacious enough for the marshalling of
an army. Around its sides ran tiers of marble seats, and all
about it rose gleaming statues of marble, of bronze, of silver,
and of gold--Augustus and the emperors, gods and goddesses of the
old pagan days, heroes of the eastern and western empires. The
bright oriental sun streamed down upon it, and as the trumpets
sounded from beneath the imperial balcony, there filed into the
arena the glittering troops of the empire, gorgeous in color and
appointments, with lofty crests and gleaming armor, with
shimmering spear-tips, prancing horses, towering elephants, and
mighty engines of war and siege, with archers and spearmen, with
sounding trumpets and swaying standards and, high over all, the
purple labarum, woven in gold and jewels,--the sacred banner of
Constantine. Marching and counter-marching, around and around,
and in and out, until it seemed wellnigh endless, the martial
procession passed before the eyes of the northern barbarians,
watchful of every movement, eager as children to witness this
royal review.

"These are but as a handful of dust amid the sands of the sea to
the troops of the empire," said the prefect Anthemius, when the
glittering rear-guard had passed from the Hippodrome. And the
Princess Pulcheria added, "And these, O men from the north, are
to help and succor the friends of the great emperor, even as they
are for the terror and destruction of his foes. Bid the
messengers from Ruas the king consider, good Anthemius, whether
it were not wiser for their master to be the friend rather than
the foe of the emperor. Ask him whether it would not be in
keeping with his valor and his might to be made one of the great
captains of the empire, with a yearly stipend of many pounds of
gold, as the recompense of the emperor for his services and his
love."

Again the prefect looked with pleasure and surprise upon this
wise young girl of fifteen, who had seen so shrewdly and so well
the way to the hearts of these northern barbarians, to whom gold
and warlike display were as meat and drink.

"You hear the words of this wise young maid," he said. "Would it
not please Ruas the king to be the friend of the emperor, a
general of the empire, and the acceptor, on each recurring season
of the Circensian games, of full two hundred pounds of gold as
recompense for service and friendship?"

"Say, rather, three hundred pounds," said Eslaw, the chief of the
envoys, "and our master may, perchance, esteem it wise and fair."

"Nay, it is not for the great emperor to chaffer with his
friends," said Pulcheria, the princess. "Bid that the stipend be
fixed at three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, good Anthemius,
and let our guests bear to Ruas the king pledges and tokens of
the emperor's friendship."

"And bid, too, that they do leave yon barbarian boy at our court
as hostage of their faith," demanded young Theodosius the
emperor, now speaking for the first time and making a most stupid
blunder at a critical moment.

For, with a sudden start of revengeful indignation, young Attila
the Hun turned to the boy emperor: "I will be no man's hostage,"
he cried. "Freely I came, freely will I go! Come down from thy
bauble of a chair and thou and I will try, even in your circus
yonder, which is the better boy, and which should rightly be
hostage for faith and promise given

"How now!" exclaimed the boy emperor, altogether unused to such
uncourtier-like language; "this to me!" And the hasty young Hun
continued:

"Ay, this and more! I tell thee, boy, that were I Ruas the king,
the grass should never grow where the hoofs of my war-horse trod;
Scythia should be mine; Persia should be mine; Rome should be
mine. And look you, sir emperor, the time shall surely come when
the king of the Huns shall be content not with paltry tribute and
needless office, but with naught but Roman treasure and Roman
slaves!"

But into this torrent of words came Pulcheria's calm voice again.
"Nay, good Attila, and nay, my brother and my lord," she said.
"'T were not between friends and allies to talk of tribute, nor
of slaves, nor yet of hostage. Freely did'st thou come and as
freely shalt thou go; and let this pledge tell of friendship
between Theodosius the emperor and Ruas the king." And, with a
step forward, she flung her own broad chain of gold around the
stout and swarthy neck of the defiant young Attila.

So, through a girl's ready tact and quiet speech, was the terror
of barbarian invasion averted. Ruas the Hun rested content for
years with his annual salary of three hundred and fifty pounds of
gold, or over seventy thousand dollars, and his title of General
of the Empire; while not for twenty years did the hot-headed
young Attila make good his threat against the Roman power.

Anthemius the prefect, like the wise man he was, recognized the
worth of the young Princess Pulcheria; he saw how great was her
influence over her brother the emperor, and noted with
astonishment and pleasure her words of wisdom and her rare
common-sense.

"Rule thou in my place, O Princess!" he said, soon after this
interview with the barbarian envoys. "Thou alone, of all in this
broad empire, art best fitted to take lead and direction in the
duties of its governing."

Pulcheria, though a wise young girl, was prudent and
conscientious.

"Such high authority is not for a girl like me, good Anthemius,"
she replied. "Rather let me shape the ways and the growth of the
emperor my brother, and teach him how best to maintain himself in
a deportment befitting his high estate, so that he may become a
wise and just ruler; but do thou bear sway for him until such
time as he may take the guidance on himself."

"Nay, not so, Princess," the old prefect said. "She who can shape
the ways of a boy may guide the will of an empire. Be thou, then,
Regent and Augusta, and rule this empire as becometh the daughter
of Arcadius and the granddaughter of the great Theodosius."

And as he desired, so it was decided. The Senate of the East
decreed it and, in long procession, over flower-strewn pavements
and through gorgeously decorated streets, with the trumpets
sounding their loudest, with swaying standards, and rank upon
rank of imperial troops, with great officers of the government
and throngs of palace attendants, this young girl of sixteen, on
the fourth day of July, in the year 414, proceeded to the Church
of the Holy Apostles, and was there publicly proclaimed Pulcheria
Augusta, Regent of the East, solemnly accepting the trust as a
sacred and patriotic duty.

And, not many days after, before the high altar of this same
Church of the Holy Apostles, Pulcheria the princess stood with
her younger sisters, Arcadia and Marina, and with all the
impressive ceremonial of the Eastern Church, made a solemn vow to
devote their lives to the keeping of their father's heritage and
the assistance of their only brother; to forswear the world and
all its allurements; never to marry; and to be in all things
faithful and constant to each other in this their promise and
their pledge.

And they were faithful and constant. The story of those three
determined young maidens, yet scarcely "in their teens," reads
almost like a page from Tennyson's beautiful poem, "The
Princess," with which many of my girl readers are doubtless
familiar. The young regent and her sisters, with their train of
attendant maidens, renounced the vanity of dress--wearing only
plain and simple robes; they spent their time in making garments
for the poor, and embroidered work for church decorations; and
with song and prayer and frugal meals, interspersed with frequent
fasts, they kept their vow to "forswear the world and its
allurements," in an altogether strict and monotonous manner. Of
course this style of living is no more to be recommended to
healthy, hearty, fun-loving girls of fifteen than is its extreme
of gayety and indulgence, but it had its effect in those bad old
days of dissipation and excess, and the simplicity and soberness
of this wise young girl's life in the very midst of so much power
and luxury, made even the worst elements in the empire respect
and honor her.

It would be interesting, did space permit, to sketch at length
some of the devisings and doings of this girl regent of sixteen.
"She superintended with extraordinary wisdom," says the old
chronicler Sozemon, "the transactions of the Roman government,"
and "afforded the spectacle," says Ozanam, a later historian, "of
a girlish princess of sixteen, granddaughter and sole inheritor
of the genius and courage of Theodosius the Great, governing the
empires of the east and west, and being proclaimed on the death
of her brother, Augusta, Imperatrix, and mistress of the world!"

This last event--the death of Theodosius the Younger--occurred in
the year 449, and Pulcheria ascended the golden throne of
Constantinople--the first woman that ever ruled as sole empress
of the Roman world.

She died July 18, 453. That same year saw the death of her
youthful acquaintance, Attila the Hun, that fierce barbarian whom
men had called the "Scourge of God." His mighty empire stretched
from the great wall of China to the Western Alps; but, though he
ravaged the lands of both eastern and western Rome, he seems to
have been so managed or controlled by the wise and peaceful
measures of the girl regent, that his destroying hordes never
troubled the splendid city by the Golden Horn which offered so
rare and tempting a booty.

It is not given to the girls of to-day to have any thing like the
magnificent opportunities of the young Pulcheria. But duty in
many a form faces them again and again, while not unfrequently
the occasion comes for sacrifice of comfort or for devotion to a
trust. To all such the example of this fair young princess of old
Constantinople, who, fifteen centuries ago, saw her duty plainly
and undertook it simply and without hesitation, comes to
strengthen and incite; and the girl who feels herself overwhelmed
by responsibility, or who is fearful of her own untried powers,
may gather strength, courage, wisdom, and will from the story of
this historic girl of the long ago--the wise young Regent of the
East, Pulcheria of Constantinople.

CLOTILDA OF BURGANDY:

THE GIRL OF THE FRENCH VINYARDS

[Afterward known as "St. Clotilda," the first Queen of France.]
A.D. 485.

It was little more than fourteen hundred years ago, in the year
of our Lord 485, that a little girl crouched trembling and
terrified, at the feet of a pitying priest in the palace of the
kings of Burgundy. There has been many a sad little maid of ten,
before and since the days of the fair-haired Princess Clotilda,
but surely none had greater cause for terror and tears than she.
For her cruel uncle, Gundebald, waging war against his brother
Chilperic, the rightful king of Burgundy, had with a band of
savage followers burst into his brother's palace and, after the
fierce and relentless fashion of those cruel days, had murdered
King Chilperic, the father of little Clotilda, the queen, her
mother, and the young princes, her brothers; and was now
searching for her and her sister Sedelenda, to kill them also.

Poor Sedelenda had hidden away in some other far-off corner; but
even as Clotilda hung for protection to the robe of the good
stranger-priest Ugo of Rheims (whom the king, her father, had
lodged in the palace, on his homeward journey from Jerusalem),
the clash of steel drew nearer and nearer. Through the corridor
came the rush of feet, the arras in the doorway was rudely flung
aside, and the poor child's fierce pursuers, with her cruel uncle
at their head, rushed into the room.

"Hollo! Here hides the game!" he cried in savage exultation.
"Thrust her away, Sir Priest, or thou diest in her stead. Not one
of the tyrant's brood shall live. I say it!"

"And who art thou to judge of life or death?" demanded the priest
sternly, as he still shielded the trembling child.

"I am Gundebald, King of Burgundy by the grace of mine own good
sword and the right of succession," was the reply. "Trifle not
with me, Sir Priest, but thrust away the child. She is my lawful
prize to do with as I will. Ho, Sigebert, drag her forth!"

Quick as a flash the brave priest stepped before, the cowering
child, and, with one hand still resting protectingly on the
girl's fair hair, he raised the other in stern and fearless
protest, and boldly faced the murderous throng.

"Back, men of blood!" he cried. "Back! Nor dare to lay hand on
this young maid who hath here sought sanctuary!"[1]

[1] Under the Goths and Franks the protection of churches and
priests, when extended to persons in peril, was called the "right
of sanctuary," and was respected even by the fiercest of
pursuers.

Fierce and savage men always respect bravery in others. There was
something so courageous and heroic in the act of that single
priest in thus facing a ferocious and determined band, in defence
of a little girl,--for girls were but slightingly regarded in
those far-off days,--that it caught the savage fancy of the cruel
king. And this, joined with his respect for the Church's right of
sanctuary, and with the lessening of his thirst for blood, now
that he had satisfied his first desire for revenge. led him to
desist.

"So be it then," he said, lowering his threatening sword. "I
yield her to thee, Sir Priest. Look to her welfare and thine own.
Surely a girl can do no harm."

But King Gundebald and his house lived to learn how far wrong was
that unguarded statement. For the very lowering of the murderous
sword that thus brought life to the little Princess Clotilda
meant the downfall of the kingdom of Burgundy and the rise of the
great and victorious nation of France. The memories of even a
little maid of ten are not easily blotted out.

Her sister, Sedelenda, had found refuge and safety in the convent
of Ainay, near at hand, and there, too, Clotilda would have gone,
but her uncle, the new king, said: "No, the maidens must be
forever separated." He expressed a willingness, however, to have
the Princess Clotilda brought up in his palace, which had been
her father's, and requested the priest Ugo of Rheims to remain
awhile, and look after the girl's education. In those days a
king's request was a command, and the good Ugo, though stern and
brave in the face of real danger, was shrewd enough to know that
it was best for him to yield to the king's wishes. So he
continued in the palace of the king, looking after the welfare of
his little charge, until suddenly the girl took matters into her
own hands, and decided his future and her own.

The kingdom of Burgundy, in the days of the Princess Clotilda,
was a large tract of country now embraced by Southern France and
Western Switzerland. It had been given over by the Romans to the
Goths, who had invaded it in the year 413. It was a land of
forest and vineyards, of fair valleys and sheltered hill-sides,
and of busy cities that the fostering hand of Rome had
beautified; while through its broad domain the Rhone, pure and
sparkling, swept with a rapid current from Swiss lake and
glacier, southward to the broad and beautiful Mediterranean.
Lyons was its capital, and on the hill of Fourviere, overlooking
the city below it, rose the marble palace of the Burgundian
kings, near to the spot where, to-day, the ruined forum of the
old Roman days is still shown to tourists.

It had been a palace for centuries. Roman governors of "Imperial
Gaul" had made it their head-quarters and their home; three Roman
emperors had cooed and cried as babies within its walls; and it
had witnessed also many a feast and foray, and the changing
fortunes of Roman, Gallic, and Burgundian conquerors and
over-lords. But it was no longer "home" to the little Princess
Clotilda. She thought of her father and mother, and of her
brothers, the little princes with whom she had played in this
very palace, as it now seemed to her, so many years ago. And the
more she feared her cruel uncle, the more did she desire to go
far, far away from his presence. So, after thinking the whole
matter over, as little girls of ten can sometimes think, she told
her good friend Ugo, the priest, of her father's youngest brother
Godegesil, who ruled the dependent principality of Geneva, far up
the valley of the Rhone.

"Yes, child, I know the place," said Ugo. "A fair city indeed, on
the blue and beautiful Lake Lemanus, walled in by mountains, and
rich in corn and vineyards."

"Then let us fly thither," said the girl. "My uncle Godegesil I
know will succor us, and I shall be freed from my fears of King
Gundebald."

Though it seemed at first to the good priest only a child's
desire, he learned to think better of it when he saw how unhappy
the poor girl was in the hated palace, and how slight were her
chances for improvement. And so, one fair spring morning in the
year 486, the two slipped quietly out of the palace; and by slow
and cautious stages, with help from friendly priests and nuns,
and frequent rides in the heavy ox-wagons that were the only
means of transport other than horseback, they finally reached the
old city of Geneva.

And on the journey, the good Ugo had made the road seem less
weary, and the lumbering ox-wagons less jolty and painful, by
telling his bright young charge of all the wonders and relics he
had seen in his journeyings in the East; but especially did the
girl love to hear him tell of the boy king of the Franks,
Hlodo-wig, or Clovis, who lived in the priest's own boyhood home
of Tournay, in far-off Belgium, and who, though so brave and
daring, was still a pagan, when all the world was fast becoming
Christian. And as Clotilda listened, she wished that she could
turn this brave young chief away from his heathen deities, Thor
and Odin, to the worship of the Christians' God; and, revolving
strange fancies in her mind, she determined what she would do
when she "grew up,"--as many a girl since her day has determined.
But even as they reached the fair city of Geneva--then half
Roman, half Gallic, in its buildings and its life--the wonderful
news met them how this boy-king Clovis, sending a challenge to
combat to the prefect Syagrius, the last of the Roman governors,
had defeated him in a battle at Soissons, and broken forever the
power of Rome in Gaul.

War, which is never any thing but terrible, was doubly so in
those savage days, and the plunder of the captured cities and
homesteads was the chief return for which the barbarian soldiers
followed their leaders. But when the Princess Clotilda heard how,
even in the midst of his burning and plundering, the young
Frankish chief spared some of the fairest Christian churches, he
became still more her hero; and again the desire to convert him
from paganism and to revenge her father's murder took shape in
her mind. For, devout and good though she was, this excellent
little maiden of the year 485 was by no means the gentle-hearted
girl of 1888, and, like most of the world about her, had but two
desires: to become a good church-helper, and to be revenged on
her enemies. Certainly, fourteen centuries of progress and
education have made us more loving and less vindictive.

But now that the good priest Ugo of Rheims saw that his own home
land was in trouble, he felt that there lay his duty. And
Godegesil, the under-king of Geneva, feeling uneasy alike from
the nearness of this boy conqueror and the possible displeasure
of his brother and over-lord, King Gundebald, declined longer to
shelter his niece in his palace at Geneva.

"And why may I not go with you?" the girl asked of Ugo; but the
old priest knew that a conquered and plundered land was no place
to which to convey a young maid for safety, and the princess,
therefore, found refuge among the sisters of the church of St.
Peter in Geneva. And here she passed her girlhood, as the record
says, "in works of piety and charity."

So four more years went by. In the north, the boy chieftain,
reaching manhood, had been raised aloft on the shields of his
fair-haired and long-limbed followers, and with many a "hael!"
and shout had been proclaimed "King of the Franks." In the south,
the young Princess Clotilda, now nearly sixteen, had washed the
feet of pilgrims, ministered to the poor, and, after the manner
of her day, had proved herself a zealous church-worker in that
low-roofed convent near the old church of St. Peter, high on that
same hill in Geneva where to-day, hemmed in by narrow streets and
tall houses, the cathedral of St. Peter, twice rebuilded since
Clotilda's time, overlooks the quaint city, the beautiful lake of
Geneva, and the rushing Rhone, and sees across the valley of the
Arve the gray and barren rocks of the Petit Seleve and the
distant snows of Mont Blanc.

One bright summer day, as the young princess passed into the
hospitium, or guest-room for poor pilgrims, attached to the
convent, she saw there a stranger, dressed in rags. He had the
wallet and staff of a mendicant, or begging pilgrim, and, coming
toward her, he asked for "charity in the name of the blessed St.
Peter, whose church thou servest."

The young girl brought the pilgrim food, and then, according to
the custom of the day, kneeling on the earthen floor, she began
to bathe his feet. But as she did so, the pilgrim, bending
forward, said in a low voice:

"Lady, I have great matters to announce to thee, if thou deign to
permit me to reveal them."

Pilgrims in those days were frequently made the bearers of
special messages between distant friends; but this poor young
orphan princess could think of no one from whom a message to her
might come, Nevertheless, she simply said: "Say on." In the same
low tone the beggar continued, "Clovis, King of the Franks, sends
thee greeting."

The girl looked up now, thoroughly surprised. This beggar must be
a madman, she thought. But the eyes of the pilgrim looked at her
reassuringly, and he said: "In token whereof, he sendeth thee
this ring by me, his confidant and comitatus,[1] Aurelian of
Soissons."

[1] One of the king's special body-guard, from which comes the
title comp, count.

The Princess Clotilda took, as if in a dream, the ring of
transparent jacinth set in solid gold, and asked quietly:

"What would the king of the Franks with me?"

"The king, my master, hath heard from the holy Bishop Remi and
the good priest Ugo of thy beauty and discreetness," replied
Aurelian; "and likewise of the sad condition of one who is the
daughter of a royal line. He bade me use all my wit to come nigh
to thee, and to say that, if it be the will of the gods, he would
fain raise thee to his rank by marriage."

Those were days of swift and sudden surprises, when kings made up
their minds in royal haste, and princesses were not expected to
be surprised at whatever they might hear. And so we must not feel
surprised to learn that all the dreams of her younger days came
into the girl's mind, and that, as the record states, "she
accepted the ring with great joy."

"Return promptly to thy lord," she said to the messenger, "and
bid him, if he would fain unite me to him in marriage, to send
messengers without delay to demand me of my uncle, King
Gundebald, and let those same messengers take me away in haste,
so soon as they shall have obtained permission."

For this wise young princess knew that her uncle's word was not
to be long depended upon, and she feared, too, that certain
advisers at her uncle's court might counsel him to do her harm
before the messengers of King Clovis could have conducted her
beyond the borders of Burgundy.

Aurelian, still in his pilgrim's disguise, for he feared
discovery in a hostile country, hastened back to King Clovis,
who, the record says, was "pleased with his success and with
Clotilda's notion, and at once sent a deputation to Gundebald to
demand his niece in marriage."

As Clotilda foresaw, her uncle stood in too much dread of this
fierce young conqueror of the north to say him nay. And soon in
the palace at Lyons, so full of terrible memories to this orphan
girl, the courteous Aurelian, now no longer in beggar's rags, but
gorgeous in white silk and a flowing sagum, or mantle of
vermilion, publicly engaged himself, as the representative of
King Clovis, to the Princess Clotilda; and, according to the
curious custom of the time, cemented the engagement by giving to
the young girl a sou and a denier.[1]

[1] Two pieces of old French coin, equalling about a cent and a
mill in American money.

"Now deliver the princess into our hand, O king," said the
messenger, "that we may take her to King Clovis, who waiteth for
us even now at Chalons to conclude these nuptials."

So, almost before he knew what he was doing, King Gundebald had
bidden his niece farewell; and the princess, with her escort of
Frankish spears, was rumbling away in a clumsy basterne, or
covered ox-wagon, toward the frontier of Burgundy.

But the slow-moving ox-wagon by no means suited the impatience of
this shrewd young princess. She knew her uncle, the king of
Burgundy, too well. When once he was roused to action, he was
fierce and furious.

"Good Aurelian," she said at length to the king's ambassador, who
rode by her side: "if that thou wouldst take me into the presence
of thy lord, the king of the Franks, let me descend from this
carriage, mount me on horseback, and let us speed hence as fast
as we may, for never in this carriage shall I reach the presence
of my lord, the king."

And none too soon was her advice acted, upon for, the counsellors
of King Gundebald, noticing Clotilda's anxiety to be gone,
concluded that, after all, they had made a mistake in betrothing
her to King Clovis.

"Thou shouldst have remembered, my lord," they said, "that thou
didst slay Clotilda's father, her mother, and the young princes,
her brothers. If Clotilda become powerful, be sure she will
avenge the wrong thou hast wrought her."

And forthwith the king sent off an armed band, with orders to
bring back both the princess and the treasure he had sent with
her as her marriage portion. But already the princess and her
escort were safely across the Seine, where, in the Campania, or
plain-country,--later known as the province of Champagne--she met
the king of the Franks.

I am sorry to be obliged to confess that the first recorded
desire of this beautiful, brave, and devout young maiden, when
she found herself safely among the fierce followers of King
Clovis, was a request for vengeance. But we must remember, girls
and boys, that this is a story of half-savage days when, as I
have already said, the desire for revenge on one's enemies was
common to all.

From the midst of his skin-clad and green-robed guards and
nobles, young Clovis--in a dress of "crimson and gold, and
milk-white silk," and with his yellow hair coiled in a great
top-knot on his uncovered head--advanced to meet his bride.

"My lord king," said Clotilda, "the bands of the king of Burgundy
follow hard upon us to bear me off. Command, I pray thee, that
these, my escort, scatter themselves right and left for twoscore
miles, and plunder and burn the lands of the king of Burgundy."

Probably in no other way could this wise young girl of seventeen
have so thoroughly pleased the fierce and warlike young king. He
gladly ordered her wishes to be carried out, and the plunderers
forthwith departed to carry out the royal command.

So her troubles were ended, and this prince and
princess,--Hlodo-wig, or Clovis (meaning the "warrior youth"),
and Hlodo-hilde, or Clotilda (meaning the "brilliant and noble
maid"),--in spite of the wicked uncle Gundebald, were married at
Soissons, in the year 493, and, as the fairy stories say, "lived
happily together ever after."

The record of their later years has no place in this sketch of
the girlhood of Clotilda; but it is one of the most interesting
and dramatic of the old-time historic stories. The dream of that
sad little princess in the old convent at Geneva, "to make her
boy-hero a Christian, and to be revenged on the murderer of her
parents," was in time fulfilled. For on Christmas-day, in the
year 493, the young king and three thousand of his followers were
baptized amid gorgeous ceremonial in the great church of St.
Martin at Rheims.

The story of the young queen's revenge is not to be told in these
pages. But, though terrible, it is only one among the many tales
of vengeance that show us what fierce and cruel folk our
ancestors were, in the days when passion instead of love ruled
the hearts of men and women, and of boys and girls as well; and
how favored are we of this nineteenth century, in all the peace
and prosperity and home happiness that surround us.

But from this conversion, as also from this revenge, came the
great power of Clovis and Clotilda; for, ere his death, in the
year 511, he brought all the land under his sway from the Rhine
to the Rhone, the ocean and the Pyrenees; he was hailed by his
people with the old Roman titles of Consul and Augustus, and
reigned victorious as the first king of France. Clotilda, after
years of wise counsel and charitable works, upon which her
determination for revenge seems to be the only stain, died long
after her husband, in the year 545, and to-day, in the city of
Paris, which was even then the capital of new France, the church
of St. Clotilda stands as her memorial, while her marble statue
may be seen by the traveller in the great palace of the
Luxembourg.

A typical girl of those harsh old days of the long ago,--loving
and generous toward her friends, unforgiving and revengeful to
her enemies,--reared in the midst of cruelty and of charity, she
did her duty according to the light given her, made France a
Christian nation, and so helped on the progress of civilization.
Certainly a place among the world's historic girls may rightly be
accorded to this fair-haired young princess of the summer-land of
France, the beautiful Clotilda of Burgundy.

WOO OF HWANG-HO.:

THE GIRL OF THE YELLOW RIVER.

[Afterwards the Great Empress Woo of China.] A.D. 635.

Thomas the Nestorian had been in many lands and in the midst of
many dangers, but he had never before found himself in quite so
unpleasant a position as now. Six ugly Tartar horsemen with very
uncomfortable-looking spears and appalling shouts, and mounted on
their swift Kirghiz ponies, were charging down upon him, while
neither the rushing Yellow River on the right hand, nor the steep
dirt-cliffs on the left, could offer him shelter or means of
escape. These dirt-cliffs, or "loess," to give them their
scientific name, are remarkable banks of brownish-yellow loam,
found largely in Northern and Western China, and rising sometimes
to a height of a thousand feet. Their peculiar yellow tinge makes
every thing look "hwang" or yellow,--and hence yellow is a
favorite color among the Chinese. So, for instance, the emperor
is "Hwang-ti"--the "Lord of the Yellow Land"; the imperial throne
is the "Hwang-wei" or "yellow throne" of China; the great river,
formerly spelled in your school geographies Hoang-ho, is
"Hwang-ho," the "yellow river," etc.

These "hwang" cliffs, or dirt-cliffs, are full of caves and
crevices, but the good priest could see no convenient cave, and
he had therefore no alternative but to boldly face his fate, and
like a brave man calmly meet what he could not avoid.

But, just as he had singled out, as his probable captor, one
peculiarly unattractive-looking horseman, whose crimson sheepskin
coat and long horsetail plume were streaming in the wind, and
just as he had braced himself to meet the onset against the great
"loess," or dirt-cliff, he felt a twitch at his black upper robe,
and a low voice--a girl's, he was confident--said quickly:

"Look not before nor behind thee, good O-lopun, but trust to my
word and give a backward leap."

Thomas the Nestorian had learned two valuable lessons in his much
wandering about the earth,--never to appear surprised, and always
to be ready to act quickly. So, knowing nothing of the possible
results of his action, but feeling that it could scarcely be
worse than death from Tartar spears, he leaped back, as bidden.

The next instant, he found himself flat upon his back in one of
the low-ceiled cliff caves that abound in Western China, while
the screen of vines that had concealed its entrance still
quivered from his fall. Picking himself up and breathing a prayer
of thanks for his deliverance, he peered through the leafy
doorway and beheld in surprise six much astonished Tartar robbers
regarding with looks of puzzled wonder a defiant little Chinese
girl, who had evidently darted out of the cave as he had tumbled
in. She was facing the enemy as boldly as had he, and her little
almond eyes fairly danced with mischievous delight at their
perplexity.

At once he recognized the child. She was Woo (the "high-spirited"
or "dauntless one", the bright young girl whom he had often
noticed in the throng at his mission-house in Tung-Chow,--the
little city by the Yellow River, where her father, the bannerman,
held guard at the Dragon Gate.

He was about to call out to the girl to save