Removed Emperor’s Shrouds.
Victor Hugo, while walking through Aix-la-Chapelle, complained even then of the innumerable violations to which the great Charlemagne’s tomb had been subjected.
“Some day,” said he, “I suppose that a pious and holy thought will enter the mind of some king or emperor. Charlemagne’s remains will be taken from the chest where the sacristans put them and again laid in his tomb.
“What is left of his bones will be religiously reassembled. He will regain his Byzantine vault, his bronze doors, and his marble armchair with its fourteen plates of gold, and the kneeling visitor will be enabled to behold, gleaming vaguely in the darkness, that fantom—crown on head and orb in hand—that once was Charlemagne.”
Well, no such thing was accomplished. Once more the dignitaries of the empire have assembled to open a coffin. The two shrouds that enveloped Charlemagne have been removed—those Oriental fabrics that some calif had sent to the emperor—and since, as the telegraphic despatches say, “the light was not sufficient to operate,” they have been sent to a Friedrichstrasse photographer, who will find light enough, egad!