the children, and a few days afterwards
her sons sent her a sword and a pair of
scissors, bidding her choose. Her indignation blazed out. "My grandchildren, the grandsons of a great warrior like Clovis,—shaven monks? Never!
Death a thousand times rather!" Her
sons gave her no time to reconsider.
They murdered with their own hands
their brother's children—two little boys
of eight and ten, who kneeled at their
feet and begged for mercy. The third
disappeared. The attendants were questioned in vain; no one would own to having aided or seen his escape. He
remained long concealed. He cut off his
hair, thus renouncing all claim to the
throne. He grew up in a monastery in
Provence, and, after many years, came
to Paris, and thence to Nogent, near
which he built a monastery, which afterwards became a great collegiate church,
and was called after him, St. Cloud, one
of the many forms of Clovis or Louis.
About the time of the murder of her grandchildren, Clotilda's daughter and namesake was married to Amalaric, the Arian king of the Visigoths, who ill-treated her. She sent her brothers a veil stained with her blood. Childebert was delighted to go and fight Amalaric and pillage his towns. He brought Clotilda away with him, but she died on her way to Paris.
The elder Clotilda spent most of her remaining life at Tours, she and her husband having had a great devotion to St. Martin. She prayed and fasted and wept, and gave all she had to the Church and to the poor. While she was living there, withdrawn from the world, her son and stepson brought home from the wars in Thuringia two royal children as captives, one of whom, St. Radegund, became the wife of her youngest son. In her last illness Clotilda sent for her two sons Childebert and Clothaire, and exhorted them to lead a godly and virtuous life. She died June 3, 545, and was buried the feet of St. Gene- viève, in the church of SS. Peter and Paul, where Clovis had been laid more than thirty years before.
Besides Les Andelys, she built a church in honour of St. George, with some cells for nuns, at Chelles, near Paris. It was magnificently refounded in the next century by St. Bathilde, wife of Clovis II., and was a great and wealthy abbey down to modern times. It was for many years a great place of resort and education for English prin- cesses, many of whom descended from Clovis and Clotilda, through St. Bertha, queen of Kent.
On Nov. 30, 1857, a grand new church in Paris, under the invocation of St. Clotilda, was opened with a solemn service by the cardinal-archbishop.
Gregory of Tours is the great contemporary authority, and is quoted by all the modern histories and lives. Sismondi, Hist. des Français, I. Le Glay, Gaule Belgique. Bouquet, Receuil de Monuments.
St. Clotilda (2), a reputed sister of Irmina and Adela, daughters of Dagobert II.
B. Clotilda (3), March 7. 1759-1802. Marie Adelaide Clotilde Xavier de Bourbon was queen of Sardinia; grand-daughter of Louis XV., king of France (1715-1774); sister of Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and Charles X. She married Charles Emmanuel II., who succeeded his father, Victor Amadeus, as king of Sardinia, in 1796. Her husband and father-in-law were much attached to the Bourbons and the ancient régime. Two of Charles Emmanuel's sisters were married to two of Clotilda's brothers, and when the revolution spread from France to Piedmont, they became refugees at the court of Turin.
In 1793, Louis XVI., his sister, Madame Elizabeth, and Queen Marie Antoinette were beheaded, after which Clotilda always wore a penitential mourning dress, as one stricken of God and desiring no more to partake of the pomps and vanity of the world. In Dec., 1796, the same year in which she be- came queen, she and her busband left their palace and Turin, their capital, and the following spring they wen to Sardinia, where the Court remained until the downfall of Napoleon in 1814. Clotilda died at Rome in 1802. Pius VII. knew and admired her in her life. In 1808 he declared her "Venerable,"
