Interesting and touching are the traits we constantly meet with in the glimpses we get of the Court and private life of the emperor. His daughters were not allowed to marry because he could not bear separation from them. Hatto of Basel, the most illustrious of his elder bishops, often inveighed against the monarch's weaknesses, yet Charlemagne not only bore the bishop's censures, but sent him on a highly honourable mission to the Court of Constantinople, and chose him as one of the witnesses to his last will. The emperor's friendship with Pope Hadrian was quite remarkable, and, in spite of many differences, was deep and lasting. On hearing the news of Hadrian's death, Charlemagne burst into tears, and eulogized him in the most flattering terms. The emperor's management of his royal estates was in the highest degree prudent, skilful, energetic, and in every way admirable. To his property he gave the closest and most constant inspection, down to the very eggs produced on his farms. He gathered round him scholars, artists, and teachers, from Italy and Greece, and a Court school was opened by Alcuin, the Anglo-Saxon scholar--the English were then the most cultured of the German peoples--and a body of English pupils followed him to France. Alcuin became the friend, and in matters educational the counsellor, of Charlemagne, by whom he was entrusted with the revision of the Bible. Warnfried Paulus Diaconus, the famous Lombard writer, was ordered to compile a collection of homilies from the Fathers. Copies of both these remarkable manuscripts--Bible and Homilies--were presented to the church of Zurich, and one, the beautiful Alcuin Bible, is still extant and among its literary treasures. Thronging the learned circle whose poetic centre was Charles himself, with his wife and daughters, and two sisters, were Einhard the German, the confidant and biographer of the emperor; Augilhard, the knightly poet; the Goth Theobald, Bishop of Orleans, a scholar and man of the world; as well as many another illustrious man. Charlemagne's two sisters were nuns, and one of them, Gisela, was the great friend of Alcuin.[18]