A visit from the emperor, however, would be a rare event in his life, to be talked about for years and told to his grandchildren.  But there was one other event, which happened annually, and which was certainly looked for with excitement by Bodo and his friends.  For once a year the king’s itinerant justices, the Missi Dominici, came round to hold their court and to see if the local counts had been doing justice.  Two of them would come, a bishop and a count, and they would perhaps stay a night at the big house as guests of the abbot, and the next day they would go on to Paris, and there they would sit and do justice in the open square before the church and from all the district round great men and small, nobles and freemen and coloni, would bring their grievances and demand redress.  Bodo would go too, if anyone had injured or robbed him, and would make his complaint to the judges.  But if he were canny he would not go to them empty-handed, trusting to justice alone.  Charlemagne was very strict, but unless the missi were exceptionally honest and pious they would not be averse to taking bribes.  Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, who was one of the Emperor’s missi, has left us a most entertaining Latin poem, in which he describes the attempts of the clergy and laymen, who flocked to his court, to buy justice.[23] Every one according to his means brought a present; the rich offered money, precious stones, fine materials, and Eastern carpets, arms, horses, antique vases of gold or silver chiselled with representations of the labours of Hercules.  The poor brought skins of Cordova leather, tanned and untanned, excellent pieces of cloth and linen (poor Ermentrude must have worked hard for the month before the justices came!), boxes, and wax.  ’With this battering-ram,’ cries the shocked Bishop Theodulf, ’they hope to break down the wall of my soul.  But they would not have thought that they could shake me, if they had not so shaken other judges before,’ And indeed, if his picture be true, the royal justices must have been followed about by a regular caravan of carts and horses to carry their presents.  Even Theodulf has to admit that, in order not to hurt people’s feelings, he was obliged to accept certain unconsidered trifles in the shape of eggs and bread and wine and chickens and little birds, ’whose bodies’ (he says, smacking his lips) ‘are small, but very good to eat.’  One seems to detect the anxious face of Bodo behind those eggs and little birds.

Another treat Bodo had which happened once a year; for regularly on the ninth of October there began the great fair of St Denys, which went on for a whole month, outside the gates of Paris.[24] Then for a week before the fair little booths and sheds sprang up, with open fronts in which the merchants could display their wares, and the Abbey of St Denys, which had the right to take a toll of all the merchants who came there to sell, saw to it that the fair was well enclosed