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CHAPTER II. THE KING OF BEAUTY,
ONE chronicle which I have discovered, and which is only known to me, assures us that Charlemagne was devotedly fond of children. It was his pleasure one day to call a couple of hundred of them together, in his royalty of Paderborn, and say to them—
“You are the masters here, and my servants are at your disposal. Make hay of all the flowers in my gardens, and my gardeners shall assist you. Plan a dinner tremendous enough to kill my friend Guy of Burgundy with indigestion, and my cooks are under your orders. Ransack my illuminated books; and if by chance you tear them, Eginhard will restore them so that it can’t be detected. Break the silver strings of the queen’s harp, and they shall be replaced before she suspects mischief. Command, bully, pillage, if you like, to your hearts’ content. There is but one thing I forbid”—and Charles, knitting his great brows, spoke in a voice of thunder—“one thing I forbid, do you hear? I forbid you to put yourselves out of the way in the slightest degree.”
This speech was calculated to raise the wildest enthusiasm. In a moment the palace was ravaged. Mad with liberty, the little folks rushed hither and thither, pillaging everywhere at random, and to no purpose, like silly butterflies. The happiness of being free to do what they pleased was enough.
It was indeed a deafening tumult, an unequalled outburst of jollity. They tore down the hangings; they broke open the aviaries; they smashed the statues; they ransacked the sideboards; they tore up the flowers—until, at last, by degrees, their impetuosity wore itself out. At the end of an hour the children, left to themselves, and having nothing more to destroy, could not invent any means of amusing themselves.
When the Emperor returned he found his little visitors scattered throughout the palace, tired, idle, and melancholy. Charles called them all round him, and inquired if they, were all enjoying themselves. The children hung down their heads without answering. He repeated the question with the same result. At last Mitaine, more confident than the rest, opened her mouth—