Meantime the affairs of the Empire were falling into confusion. Provinces were all but revolting, and foreign foes were mustering their forces. The Emperor's chief counsellor was the Archbishop of Reims. One night—though this is more legendary than historical—the archbishop was walking by himself when he came upon a shape in the moonlight which proclaimed itself as follows: "I am the good genius of Charlemagne. I came to teach you how to remove the shadow from his spirit. Dig, where I stand, a grave and let the festering body of Frastrade lie in it. But, mark you! Ere you move her body, search beneath her tongue and take out what you find there."
The archbishop hurried toward a grotesquely carved cottage door where lived a gravedigger.
"No silken sleeper so calm as they
Who seek a couch in the churchyard clay,"
sang a voice from within.
[{281}]In half an hour the grave was begun, and in another half-hour the churchman was in the chamber of Frastrade, where the Emperor, exhausted by his vigil, slept kneeling at the bedside.
The archbishop approached, and, peering into the mouth of the corpse, saw beneath the tongue a glittering jewel.
With hasty fingers he seized the token, and, as he removed it, a loud wail startled the silence of the death-chamber and aroused the king. The spell was broken.