or admiration from other quarters than
mine. I care nothing for your birth and your fortune! Listen to my words
and keep them firm in your minds: if you do not hasten to make amends
for your negligence by constant application, you will never receive
aught from me!"

The rich idlers dropped their eyes all of a tremble. The Emperor rose
and said to a young clerk, named Bernard, barely twenty years of age,
the excellence of whose work had attracted Charles' attention: "And you,
my lad, you may now follow me. I appoint you from to-day a clerk in my
chapel, nor will the evidence of my protection end there."

The Emperor looked satisfied with himself. With a complaisant air he
turned to Amael: "Well now, seigneur Breton, you have seen Charles the
Fighter, emulating in his humble capacity of man, the acts of our Lord
God when on earth. He separates the wheat from the chaff, he places the
just at his right, the wicked at his left. If you ever return to
Brittany, you will tell the school-masters of your country that Charles
is not altogether a bad superintendent of the schools that he has
founded."

"I shall say, Charles, that I saw you officiating in the midst of the
pupils with wisdom, justice, and kindness."

"I wish letters and science to shed splendor upon my reign. Were you
less of a barbarian, I would have you assist at a sitting of our
academy. We there assume the illustrious names of antiquity. Eginhard is
called 'Homer,' Clement 'Horace,' and I 'King David.' These immortal
names fit us as giants' armors do pigmies. But, at least, we do honor,
at our best, to those geniuses. Now, however," said the Emperor, rising
and breaking off the thread of his discourse on his academy, "let us,
like good Catholics, proceed to church, and hear mass upon our knees."

CHAPTER VI.

THE BISHOP OF LIMBURG.

Preceding his suite, that consisted of Eginhard, Amael, Vortigern and
the newly-created clerk Bernard, the Emperor left the school-room and
hobbled his way along a winding gallery. Encountering at one of the
sharp and rather dark turns a young and handsome female slave, Charles
addressed her with the same familiarity that he ever used towards the
innumerable women of all conditions that stocked the palace. The Emperor
chucked her under the chin, put his arm around her waist, and was about
to carry his libertine freedom even further when, recollecting that,
despite the darkness of the spot, he might be seen by the men i