farther and forced Charlemagne to get up from his chair before him.
The corpse, in rising, fell in pieces, which have been dispersed
through Europe as relics. We saw such of them as remain here at the
Chapelle. I was allowed, for about the equivalent of an American
dollar, to measure the Occidental emperor's leg--they call it his arm.
And then, as a makeweight in the bargain, the venal sacristan placed
in my hands the head of Charlemagne.

I thought Hohenfels would have sunk to the ground with disgust. He
colored deeply and dragged me into the air. "I am ashamed of every
drop of German blood in my veins," he cried. "What are we to think of
the commerce of these wretches, for whom the very wounds of Cæsar are
the lips of a money-box?"

I had given back the skull, as Hamlet returns the skull of Yorick to
the grave-digger, and was dusting my fingers with a handkerchief,
as hundreds of Hamlets have dusted theirs. I said, "'Thrift, thrift,
Horatio.'"

"At Kreutzberg there are twenty monks on the counter! This morning, at
St. Ursula's, it was the eleven thousand virgins, their skulls ranged
like Dutch cheeses above our heads or in rows around the walls, with
a battery-full of them in the neighboring apartment, like a
cheesemonger's reserved magazine. Here, the very leader of modern
ideas, the creator of our form of civilization, is shown for so
many pennies to any grocer who wants to weigh the head of a king!
Profanation! Barbarians! Philistines!"

[Illustration: THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.]