The great emperor had now entered on the eighth decade of his life. His health was apparently failing and there were also signs and portents betokening the approaching end, which, with proper regard to classical precedent, are duly recorded by Einhard. For the last three years of his life there was an unusually large number of eclipses of the sun and moon. A big spot on the sun was observed for seven days. The colonnade between the church and palace at Aachen, constructed with great labor, fell in sudden ruin on Ascension-day. The great bridge over the Rhine at Mainz, which had been ten years in building, and for which Einhard himself had acted as clerk of the works, was burnt to the water’s edge in three hours. Then, in his last expedition against Danish Godofrid (but that was as far back as 810), a fiery torch had been seen to fall from heaven, in a clear sky, on the sinister side, and Charles’s horse at the same moment falling heavily had thrown his master to the ground with such violence that the clasp of his cloak was broken, his sword-belt burst, and the spear which he held in his hand was hurled forwards twenty feet or more. Moreover there were crackings of the palace-ceilings; the golden apple which was on the roof of the church was struck by lightning and thrown on to the roof of the archbishop’s palace hard by. In the inscription which ran round the interior of the dome, and which contained the words KAROLVS PRINCEPS, the letters of the second word, only a few months before Charles’s death, faded and became invisible. All these signs convinced thoughtful persons that an old man of more than seventy, who had led a hard and strenuous life, and who was bowed by many recent sorrows, had not long to live.