correction, which, up to that time, says the monk of Angoulême, every one had spoiled after his own fancy.[78] John the Deacon, who wrote in the following century, and who evidently exceedingly relished the defeat of the Gallicans, introduces the whole story of the dispute into his life of St. Gregory. He observes that the Frankish organs were unable to express certain tremblings and delicacies of the Italian chant. “The barbarous harshness of their cracked throats,” he says, “when, by inflections and reverberations, they endeavoured to emit a gentle psalmody, out of a certain natural hoarseness sent forth grating sounds like that of carts on a high road; and thus, instead of delighting the souls of their hearers, their singing, on the contrary, rather troubled them, by provoking distractions.”[79] This is bad enough; but the Monk of Angoulême would have us know that it was not merely through their ears that the Frankish congregations had to suffer distractions. The sore distress which one inexperienced singer endured in his attempt to produce the required “tremblings” must certainly have severely tried the self-command of those who witnessed it. “It chanced,” says the historian, “that a certain clerk, ignorant of the accustomed rules, was called on to figure in the royal chapel, when, agitating his head in a circular manner, and opening an enormous mouth, he painfully endeavoured to imitate those around him.” The choir, of course, was in a suppressed titter, but Charlemagne, without betraying the slightest token of annoyance or ridicule, called the unfortunate performer to him after the office was over, and rewarded his good-will with a handsome present. This great king often assisted at matins, and indicated with his hand the clerk who was to sing the lessons, or responsory. It is also said that he used to mark the end of the motetts with a certain guttural sound (a _grunt_, his historian calls it), which became the diapason for the recommencement of the phrase. The use of organs began to be introduced during his reign, and Walafrid Strabo tells us of a woman who died of the ecstacy occasioned by first hearing one of these instruments.