the tradition) lies above the imperial victor
who sits below waiting with his scepter in his hand and his white
beard ever growing--the king of the Middle Ages. How many, many
potentates, great and small, during all the intervening centuries,
had bowed their heads and spoken words of reverence in the presence
of the only sepulchre remaining _in situ_ and intact of the
world-conquerors of antiquity! Of all these reputed soliloquies,
that of Don Carlos, in the spacious Alexandrines of Victor Hugo in
"Hernani," Gard remembered as being the most famous. He had heard
what a long and impressive recital it always is as one of the tests
of the dramatic actor at the Theatre Francais.

His thoughts ran on. Without Charlemagne's military successes, his
widespread reorganizations, the political and civil grandeur of his
acts, his picturesque journeys, his union of church and state, what
would the Dark Ages have been? In its mountains of fact and luring
mists of fable he had stood mighty and solitary, inspiring its
imagination, its legends, its superstitions, its songs. He was its
compelling figure. He it was who unified medievaldom and laid the
bases of what had since governed in western Europe and prevented it
from remaining a vast region of large and small tribes fighting
among themselves. And he alone, among the powerful military
chieftains of the old, old past, had died both peacefully and
undefeated.

Why, then, has he faded from view? This was an interesting question
to Kirtley. Why has Caesar so outshone Charlemagne? Why are Homer and
Vergil, in comparison, coming ever more to the fore? Why has Dante
become the masterly profile of medievalism?

A significant answer had before occurred to Gard. These four
personages could _write_ marvelously well while Charlemagne could
scarcely even write his name. Had he been a great author, why would
not his fame be burning brightly like theirs? In every institution
of education their classic language is kept before both youth and
professor. Their cults accordingly grow. While the Frank so largely
shaped the Middle Ages and furnished leading motives for its
background, the Italian merely pictured it.

And yet the latter has become its most distinct luminary. His art
has surpassed in renown the medieval sword and crown. His pen is a
constant self-advertiser while those emblems of state fall to the
ground. Though every spot associated with the lives of Caesar, of
Vergil, of Dante, is