Two Lives of Charlemagne

Under his pillow Charlemagne kept wax tablets, so that in the wakeful hours of the night he could practise forming his letters; he had begun too late, Einhard admits, and the writing never came. The man who tells you that grew up in the palace and ate at the table: he can give you the emperor's height in lengths of his own foot, the voice that came out clear but too light for so large a frame, the hot springs at Aachen where a hundred men went into the water because Charles liked company while he swam.