and try his fortune as king of Italy. He sent, too, (so says old
Paul) presents to tempt the simple Lombard men--such presents as
children would like--all fruits which grew in Italian orchards.
Though the gold was gone, those were still left. Great babies they
were, these Teutons, as I told you at the first; and Narses knew it
well, and had used them for his ends for many a year.

Then were terrible signs seen in Italy by night; fiery armies
fighting in the sky, and streams of blood aloft, foreshadowing the
blood which should be shed.

Sent for or not, King Alboin came; and with him all his army, and a
mighty multitude, women, and children, and slaves; Bavarians,
Gepidae, Bulgars, Sarmatae, Pannonians, Sueves, and Noricans; whose
names (says Paul) remain unto this day in the names of the villages
where they settled. With Alboin, too, came Saxons, twenty thousand
of them at the least, with wife and child. And Sigebert king of the
Franks put Suevic settlers into the lands which the Saxons had left.

Alboin gave up his own Hungarian land to his friends the Avars, on
the condition that he should have them back if he had to return. But
return he never did, he nor his Lombard host. This is the end. The
last invasion of Italy. The sowing, once for all, of an Italian
people. Fresh nations were still pressing down to the rear of the
Alps, waiting for their turn to enter the Fairy Land--not knowing,
perhaps, that nothing was left therein, but ashes and blood: --but
their chance was over now: a people were going into Italy who could
hold what they got.

On Easter Tuesday, in the year of grace 568, they came, seemingly by