Aix-la-Chapelle, Monday.—­I have always had a strange longing to know CHARLEMAGNE.  To shake him by the hand, to have opportunity of inquiring after his health and that of his family, to hear his whispered reply—­that indeed were bliss.  But CHARLEMAGNE is dead, and desire must be curbed.  The only thing open to an admirer is to visit the place of his last repose, and brood in spots his shade may yet haunt.  CHARLEMAGNE was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle (German Aachen), but since my arrival in the town, I find great difficulty in discovering his tomb.  The great soldier Emperor resembled an unfortunate and unskilful pickpocket in one respect.  He was always being taken up.  He died in the year 814, and was left undisturbed till the year 1000, when the Emperor OTTO THE THIRD opened his tomb, and, finding his great predecessor sitting on a marble chair, helped him down.  The marble chair is on view in the Cathedral to this day (verger, I mark) to witness to the truth of this narrative.  One hundred and sixty-five years later, FREDERICK BARBAROSSA opened the second tomb where OTHO had placed C., and transferred to a marble sarcophagus what, at this date, was left of him.  In the following century C. was canonised.  Whereupon nothing would satisfy FREDERICK THE SECOND but to go for the bones again.  They were now growing scarce, and only a few fragments fill the reliquary in which at length all that is left of my revered friend (if after this lapse of time I may call him so) reposes.

I have been fortunate in securing a relic, not exactly of CAROLO, but of the time at or about which he lived.  It is a piece of tapestry, on which fingers long since dust have worked a sketch of the Emperor going to his bath.  Considering its age, the tapestry is in remarkably fresh condition.  The old Hebrew trader, whom for a consideration I induced to part with it, said he would not charge any more on that account; which I thought very considerate.  He also said he might be able to get me some more pieces.  But this, I think, will do to go on with.

But if there be nothing left of CAROLO MAGNO, there still is the city he loved, in which he lived and died.  Here is the Kaiserquelle, bubbling out of Buechel in which, centuries ago, he laved his lordly limbs.  Going down into my bath this morning I observed in the dim light the imprint of a footstep on the marble stair.

“That might have been CHARLEMAGNE’S,” I said to YAHKOB, my bath attendant.

“Ja wohl,” said YAHKOB, nodding in his friendly way, and, going out, he presently returned with a hot towel.