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Many attempts were made by the young Franks to render the Christian hostages of Auvergne as wicked and as regardless of the displeasure of God as they themselves were. In some instances their mockeries and seductions prevailed; but on Attalus temptations, ridicule, and threats, were alike tried in vain, both by the heathen youth of the court of Metz, and the weak-minded among his own countrymen, who, having yielded to evil counsel and evil inclinations, wished to make him a companion in their guilt.

It was not by his own strength that Attalus was enabled to stand, when several who were his elders, and apparently of a sterner disposition than himself, fell. It was through the grace of God, to whose protection he commended himself daily, that he was supported through every trial, and manfully resisted the snares with which he was beset in the infidel city of Metz.

Meantime, the tyrannical dominion of the Franks, and the enormous taxes which they exacted, became unbearable to the people of Auvergne. They began to feel, that even the loss of their twelve youthful hostages would be a less misfortune to the country than the state of misery to which they were reduced by the foreign tyrant, who had treated them with the arrogance of a conqueror, instead of the paternal kindness of a sovereign. In spite, therefore, of the entreaties of those whose sons had been given up as pledges of their fealty to the King of the Franks, some of the chief men entered into a conspiracy to free their country from the yoke of the oppressor.