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When Theodoric heard this, he not only took active measures for defeating their project, but immediately sold all the young hostages as slaves to his ferocious nobles. It was the hard lot of Attalus to fall into the hands of an old heathen chief named Dagobert, who stripped the noble youth of the rich ornaments and costly robes which he had heretofore been accustomed to wear, and having arrayed him in the coarsest garments, put an iron collar about his neck, on which was engraved, "Attalus, of Autun, the slave of Dagobert, the lord of Gurm." He then carried him away into the wild desolate country of Treves, where his hideous old castle was situated, in the midst of a chain of barren hills; a situation where the air was cold enough to chill the very marrow in people's bones, and nothing would grow except a little stunted prickly underwood.

When Attalus, who was fastened by a leathern thong to his master's stirrup, to prevent his making his escape, first beheld this dismal place, his heart seemed to die within him. How different was the scene from the prospect of his own fair land of Auvergne! There the bright sparkling Aube flowed through plains of emerald verdure, and the inexhaustible fertility of the rich arable soil supplied perpetual harvests; there the southern hills were wreathed with clustering vines, and clothed with flowers and lovely foliage; and there the undulating landscape was studded with marble villas, built after the Roman order of architecture.