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Clodobert carried on a great trade in horses, for the mutual profit of his lordly father-in-law and himself. When, therefore, he found that the new slave, Attalus, was gentle and kind in his treatment of animals, never teasing or playing tricks with them, like the other slaves and domestics of Dagobert, he took him into his favour, removed him from his servile occupation in the castle-yard, and employed him as the keeper of the horses in the barren pastures, at the foot of the mountainous eminence on which the castle of Gurm was situated.

Attalus infinitely preferred this service, where his duties were regularly and distinctly pointed out to him, to his first situation of drudge-general to every one who chose to call upon him, and impose some difficult, and perhaps impossible task. It had not unfrequently happened, that while he was doing one thing, other persons of the ill-ordered household reviled or beat him for not having done something else. Then there were half-a-dozen children of Clodobert and his heathen spouse—young barbarians, who combined the mischievous folly and restless vivacity of childhood with the cunning and wickedness of riper years, and ran wild about the castle, tormenting every one they came near. The mild and graceful captive of Auvergne was an especial object of their malignant sport; they pinched, bit, and scratched him, without remorse, pulled his long, dark ringlets, and followed him wherever he went, hanging on his garments, and calling him by insulting epithets of contempt.