Such visionary epidemics recurred in the reigns following, and all the power of Charlemagne was put in action to calm the public agitation. An edict, afterwards renewed by Louis the Pious, forbade sylphs to manifest under the heaviest penalties. It will be understood that in the absence of the aerial beings the judgment fell upon those who made a boast of having seen them, and hence they ceased to be seen. The ships in air sailed back to the port of oblivion, and no one claimed any longer to have journeyed through the blue distance. Other popular frenzies replaced the previous mania, while the romantic splendours of the great reign of Charlemagne furnished the makers of legends with new prodigies to believe and new marvels to relate. CHAPTER IV LEGENDS OF THE REIGN OF CHARLEMAGNE Charlemagne is the real prince of enchantments and the world of faerie; his reign is like a solemn and brilliant pause between barbarism and the middle ages; while he himself is a grand and majestic apparition, recalling the magical pageant of Solomon’s sway: he is at once a resurrection and a prophecy. In him the Roman empire, overleaping Frankish and Gaulish origins, reappeared in all its splendour; in him also, as in a symbol, evoked and manifested by divination, there is delineated beforehand the perfect empire of the ages of mature civilisation, the empire crowned by priesthood and establishing its throne beside the altar. The era of chivalry and the marvellous epos of romances begin with Charlemagne; the chronicles of his period are like the _Four Sons of Aymon_, or _Oberon, King of Faerie_. Birds utter speech and direct the French army when the path has been lost in the forest; brazen colossi appear in mid-ocean and indicate to the emperor a free way eastward. Roland, first of the paladins, wields a magic sword, baptized like any Christian and bearing the name of Durandal; the hero addresses this sword, which seems to understand him, and nothing can resist its supernatural onset. Roland has also an ivory horn, contrived so skilfully that the lightest breath wakens a response within it, and that answer is heard for twenty leagues around, causing even mountains to quiver. When the paladin falls at Roncesvalles, overwhelmed rather than conquered, even then he uprises like a giant beneath some avalanche of trees and rolling rocks; he winds his horn, and the Saracens take refuge in flight. Charlemagne, at a distance of more than ten leagues, hears the signal and would speed to his aid, but he is prevented by the traitor Ganelon, who has sold the French army to the barbaric horde. Finding himself abandoned, Roland for the last time embraces his Durandal, and then, summoning all his strength, strikes it with both hands against a mountain block, hoping to shatter the weapon, lest it fall into the hands of infidels; but the block itself is cloven, the sword is not even indented. Hereat Roland clasps it to