with a skewer those that you find to be of the right quality
and keep them in your cellar for a time and then send them to
me. The rest you may keep for yourself and your ¸clergy and
your family.' This was done for two years, and the king
ordered the present of cheeses to be taken in without remark:
then in the third year the bishop brought in person his
laboriously collected cheeses. But the most just Charles
pitied his labour and anxiety and added to the bishopric an
excellent estate whence he and his successors might provide
themselves with corn and wine.[22]

We may feel sorry for the poor flustered bishop collecting his two
cartloads of cheeses; but it is possible that our real sympathy ought to
go to Bodo, who probably had to pay an extra rent in cheeses to satisfy
the emperor's taste, and got no excellent estate to recompense him.

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