Part 8

“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.