Life at court was anything but austere; even the Emperor himself could not be accused of being overscrupulous in his morals, for after the death of Liutgarda, in 800, he contracted several irregular alliances. Charles was fond of traveling; undoubtedly economic and political reasons may account for the number of royal residences. But his favorite seat was at Aix, which attracted him on account of its mineral springs. Here, in a cluster of buildings, secular and ecclesiastical, of his own creation, he was able to gratify his own tastes in amusements, which were swimming and hunting. He was fond of festivities, and liked to live surrounded by his large family, who helped him to enjoy the good cheer of his table and entered sympathetically into the natural atmosphere of a court which was without stiff convention, and which preserved in its naïve unconstrainedness the tastes of a great Teutonic tribal chieftain. But, while the wines, the abundant amount of solid food and numerous dishes of pastry, were well appreciated, there was serious conversation, and an opportunity was given to the “littérateurs” of the court to show their skill in verse or repartee. The Emperor himself reverenced learning, but his own education was anything but advanced, even for his own day. His intellectual interests were varied, theological speculation being especially attractive to him. He was fond of singing, and he spoke easily, clearly, and with an abundant diction. He knew Latin, and understood, too, a little Greek. When he was of adult age he studied rhetoric, logic, and astronomy. He liked to have the ancient historians read to him when he was at table, but his favorite book was St. Augustine’s “City of God.” Affable and easily approached, his guests found him personally interested in their affairs; he had a happy way of saying the right thing at the right time, but he was fully conscious that his position as Roman Emperor made him a successor of the Cæsars, and he never forgot that the religious consecration of the Church placed him, in a mystic sense, in the sacred line of David and of Solomon. VII THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE Though we speak of an empire founded by Charles the Great, the use of the word should not be allowed to lead us astray into comparisons or analogies based on merely verbal resemblances. Charles was not an emperor of the type known to the Roman Empire of the classic Christian period, nor as a ruler can he be compared with Russian Czars or Napoleon the First. Neither as king nor as emperor was Charles an absolute monarch. Both before and after the assumption of the more exalted title, the association of personal rule with the leadership of the armed host of the Frankish nation was so close and intimate that the ruler was not to be separated from the source of his authority. The house of the Karlings could not claim the kind of sanction given to the Merovingian princes, who were the hereditary rulers of the Franks.