urch that day if he had foreseen the pope's
intentions; yet it is not easy to believe that he was ignorant of or
non-consenting to the coming event. At the close of the chant Leo
prostrated himself at the feet of Charlemagne, and paid him adoration,
as had been the custom in the days of the old emperors. He then anointed
him with holy oil. And from that day forward Charles, "giving up the
title of patrician, bore that of emperor and Augustus."

The ceremonies ended in the presentation from the emperor to the church
of a great silver table, and, in conjunction with his son Charles and
his daughters, of golden vessels belonging to the table of five hundred
pounds' weight. This great gift was followed, on the Feast of the
Circumcision, with a superb golden corona to be suspended over the
altar. It was ornamented with gems, and contained fifty pounds of gold.
On the Feast of the Epiphany he added three golden chalices, weighing
forty-two pounds, and a golden paten of twenty-two pounds' weight. To
the other churches also, and to the pope, he made magnificent gifts, and
added three thousand pounds of silver to be distributed among the poor.

Thus, after more than three centuries, the title of Augustus was
restored to the western world. It was destined to be held many centuries
thereafter by the descendants of Charlemagne. After the division of his
empire into France and Germany, the imperial title was preserved in the
latter realm, the fiction--for it was little more--that an emperor of
the west existed being maintained down to the present century.

As to the influence exerted by the power and dominion of Charlemagne on
the minds of his contemporaries and successors, many interesting stories
might be told. Fable surrounded him, legend attached to his deeds, and
at a later date he shared the honor given to the legendary King Arthur
of England, of being made a hero of romance, a leading character in many
of those interminable romances of chivalry which formed the favorite
reading of the mediaeval age.

But we need not go beyond his own century to find him a hero of romance.
The monk of the abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland, whose story of the
defences of the land of the Avars we have already quoted, has left us a
chronicle full of surprising tales of the life and doings of Charles the
Great. One of these may be of interest, as an example of the kind of
history with which our ancestors of a thousand years ago were satisfied.