ning a cup to
his health. The King's hospitality was magnificent, especially on great
religious festivals such as Christmas and Easter.

The royal apartments were divided into winter and summer rooms. In order
to regulate the temperature hot or cold water was used, according to the
season; this circulated in the pipes of the _hypocauste_, or the
subterranean furnace which warmed the baths. The rooms with chimneys were
called _epicaustoria_ (stoves), and it was the custom hermetically to
close these when any one wished to be anointed with ointments and aromatic
essences. In the same manner as the Gallo-Roman houses, the palaces of the
Frank kings and principal nobles of ecclesiastical or military order had
_thermes_, or bath-rooms: to the _thermes_ were attached a _colymbum_, or
washhouse, a gymnasium for bodily exercise, and a _hypodrome_, or covered
gallery for exercise, which must not be confounded with the _hippodrome_,
a circus where horse-races took place.

Sometimes after the repast, in the interval between two games of dice, the
nobles listened to a bard, who sang the brilliant deeds of their ancestors
in their native tongue.

Under the government of Charlemagne, the private life of his subjects
seems to have been less rough and coarse, although they did not entirely
give up their turbulent pleasures. Science and letters, for a long time
buried in monasteries, reappeared like beautiful exiles at the imperial
court, and social life thereby gained a little charm and softness.
Charlemagne had created in his palace, under the direction of Alcuin, a
sort of academy called the "School of the Palace," which followed him
everywhere. The intellectual exercises of this school generally brought
together all the members of the imperial family, as well as all the
persons of the household. Charlemagne, in fact, was himself one of the
most attentive followers of the lessons given by Alcuin. He was indeed the
principal interlocutor and discourser at the discussions, which were on
all subjects, religions, literary, and philosophical.

[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Costumes of the Nobility from the Seventh to the
Ninth Centuries, from Documents gathered by H. de Vielcastel from the
great Libraries of Europe.]

Charlemagne took as much pains with the administration of his palace as he
did with that of his States. In his "Capitulaires," a work he wrote on
legislature, we find him descending to the minutest details in that
respect. F