nze doors surmounted with lions' heads, a white rotundo
of two stories, in which all the "fantasies" of architecture are
displayed, attracted my attention. At casting my eyes upon the ground,
I perceived a large block of black marble, with the following
inscription in brass letters:--

"Carolo Magno."

Nothing is more contemptible than to see, exposed to view, the bastard
graces that surround this great Carlovingian name; angels resembling
distorted Cupids, palm-branches like colored feathers, garlands of
flowers, and knots of ribbons, are placed under the dome of Otho III.,
and upon the tomb of Charlemagne.

The only thing here that evinces respect to the shade of that great man
is an immense lamp, twelve feet in diameter, with forty-eight burners;
which was presented, in the twelfth century, by Barbarossa. It is of
brass, gilt with gold, has the form of a crown, and is suspended from
the ceiling above the marble stone by an iron chain about seventy feet
in length.

It is evident that some other monument had been erected to Charlemagne.
There is nothing to convince us that this marble, bordered with brass,
is of antiquity. As to the letters, "Carolo Magno," they are not of a
late date than 1730.

Charlemagne is no longer under this stone. In 1166 Frederick
Barbarossa--whose gift, magnificent tho it was, does by no means
compensate for this sacrilege--caused the remains of that great emperor
to be untombed. The Church claimed the imperial skeleton, and,
separating the bones, made each a holy relic. In the adjoining
sacristy, a vicar shows the people--for three francs seventy-five
centimes--the fixt price--"the arm of Charlemagne"--that arm which held
for a time the reins of the world. Venerable relic! which has the
following inscription, written by some scribe of the twelfth century:

"Arm of the Sainted Charles the Great."

After that I saw the skull of Charlemagne, that cranium which may be
said to have been the mold of Europe, and which a beadle had the
effrontery to strike with his finger.

All were kept in a wooden armory, with a few angels, similar to those I
have just mentioned, on the top. Such is the tomb of the man whose
memory has outlived ten ages, and who, by his greatness, has shed the
rays of immortality around his name. "Sainted, Great," belong to
him--two of the most august epithets which this earth could bestow upon
a human being.

There is one thing astonishing--that is, the largeness of t