“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’ promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my studies. “But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time—as was indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and fatal to him—he said to me: “‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’ “Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths of rulers are foretold by this sign.’ “To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’ “But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us, let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’” Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly thereafter he died. The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle: “Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some coming event, marvellous or terrible.” 760 A Comet appeared in the Spring of this year, which without any doubt whatever was Halley’s. It was recorded in detail both by European and Chinese annalists, and its orbit has been calculated and identified by Laugier. A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam” and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in the Eastern Empire. 684 Chinese annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it. Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records that the plague also reached England. 607