[71] A curious and somewhat difficult question arises as to the disposal of the remains of the great emperor. This account rests on the authority of Einhard, and is fully confirmed by Thegan the biographer of Louis the Pious. But in the year 1000 the Emperor Otho III. opened the tomb in the presence of two bishops, and a knight named Otho of Lomello, and according to the statement of that knight communicated to the author of the chronicle of Novalese, they found the emperor sitting on a throne, with a golden crown on his head, and holding a golden sceptre in his hands. The hands were covered with gloves, through which the nails protruding had worked their way. A little chapel (_tuguriolum_) of marble and lime was erected over him, through the roof of which the excavators made their way. None of the emperor’s limbs had rotted away, but a little piece had fallen from the end of the nose, which Otho caused to be replaced in gold. The four discoverers fell on their knees before the majestic figure. Then they clothed him with white robes, cut the finger nails, took away one tooth as a relic, closed the roof of the chapel and departed. The account is a very circumstantial one, and is given by a contemporary chronicler on the authority of one of the actors of the scene who is a fairly well-known historical personage. Yet most modern inquirers accept the conclusion advocated by Theodor Lindner (Die Fabel von der Bestattung Karls des Grossen), that the story must be rejected as untrue, in other words, that Otho of Lomello in relating it was playing on the credulity of his hearers. The chief reasons for this conclusion are, that the story is hopelessly at variance with the statements of Einhard and Thegan. If the body was buried on the very day of death, there would be no time for the elaborate process of embalming which this story requires. The words of the epitaph “humatum,” “sub hoc conditorio situm est,” would not be applicable to such a mode of interment. Moreover, such a very unusual mode of dealing with the great emperor’s body would surely have attracted some notice from the ninth-century authors who in prose and verse celebrate the deeds of Charles, not one of whom makes the slightest allusion to it. Lastly, though an industrious search has been often made, no one has ever been able to find a trace of the _tuguriolum_ (necessarily a room of a certain size) in which the corpse was said to have been seated.