ot to
lose their company. They are reputed to have been very beautiful, and,
in spite of their occupation with the spinning-wheel, they found time
for love adventures; so that, as Eginhard tells us, "though otherwise
happy, the Emperor experienced the malignity of fortune so far as they
were concerned; yet he concealed his knowledge of the rumors current in
regard to them, and of the suspicions entertained with regard to their
honor."

Eginhard himself did not escape suspicion, though his amour with fair
Emma, and the romantic story of their nightly meetings and Emma's
carrying her learned lover through the freshly fallen snow to conceal
his footprint must be assigned to the domain of unauthenticated legend.
But it is a historical fact that several of Charlemagne's daughters had
illegitimate children. Being debarred from marriage they sought unlawful
love adventures. The oldest, Hruodrud, who had been several years
betrothed to the Greek emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitos, until her
father dissolved the betrothal, left a son by Count Rorich. Bertha's two
sons, Hartnid and Nidhard, the latter a brave warrior and a famous
chronicler, owed their existence to Angilbert, the court poet and
historian who was afterward Abbot of Centulum. Especially after the
death of Charlemagne were the lives of his daughters so shameful that
King Ludwig, the German, saw himself forced to remove some of the most
scandalously behaving lords from the suite of the princely sinners.

In spite of those moral shortcomings, Princess Bertha was especially
brilliant as a scholar. She was called Delia, sister of Apollo, in
Charlemagne's "Academy." She sang her teacher Alcuin's poems, which she
accompanied by string music. Besides the emperor's wife and his
daughters, there were two nuns in the academic circle: the elder,
Gisela, Charlemagne's sister, surnamed Lucia, Alcuin's best friend, and
her intimate, Riktrudis, with the academic name of Columba; also
Gundrada, of illustrious nobility and charm, the sole secular lady at
the court against whom no word of gossip was ever uttered by courtiers
or clerics.

So flagrant are, however, the sins of love at that brilliant court which
did so much for classical, Germanic, and sacred learning in Germany,
that even the saga, in dim recollection of past events, seized upon
Charlemagne's towering figure in respect to his moral side. He is
represented by a later legend as having been misled into grievous sins