"Would you, instead of being count of a city in Auvergne, govern a whole province--in short, be as rich and powerful as you could wish?"
"By the indivisible Trinity, are you serious? Explain yourself; I drink in your words."
"Do you also swear by the great St. Martin, my patron saint?"
"I swear it also by the great St. Martin that my tender is serious."
"Well, then, to the point. What is your project?"
"At this hour my father Clotaire is outside of Gaul warring against the Saxons. I propose to profit by his absence and make myself King in the place of my father. Several counts and dukes of the neighborhood have entered into the conspiracy. Will you be with or against me?"
"And what about your brothers, Charibert, Gontran, Chilperic and Sigebert? Will they leave your father's kingdom to you alone?"
"Clovis, your grandfather, as well as his sons, all rid themselves of their nearest relatives in the same fashion. You would be proceeding according to the traditions of your house."
"Answer, count; will you pledge yourself by a sacred oath to combat on my side at the head of your men? If you will, then, by an equal oath, I shall pledge myself to make you duke of whatever province you may choose, and to relinquish to you the goods, treasures, slaves and domains of the richest seigneurs who may have sided with my father against me."
"What you demand of me, if I understand you rightly, is that I pledge myself, in my own name and the name of my leudes and pursuivants, to _obey your mouth_, as we express it in Germany?"
"But what fate do you reserve for your father?"
"His own bodyguard came near cutting him to pieces just before the war with the Saxons. Are you aware of that?"
"Well, then, my plan is to have my brothers killed; to declare that my father died in the war with the Saxons; and then to pronounce myself King of Gaul in his place."
"But when he returns from Saxony with his army, what will you do then?"
"I shall take the field against him at the head of my leudes, and I shall kill him--just as he killed his nephews."
"I am thinking of what may happen to me. If in the war with your father you go down, and I am found mixed up in the affair--it will go ill with me. I would then be stripped as a traitor of all the lands that I hold in _benefice_, only my salic lands would be left to me."