t. iv., p. 1-113.--Fauriel,
_Histoire de la Gaule,_ etc., t. iv., p. 77-88.)

[Illustration: Ditcar the Monk recognizing the Head of Morvan----273]

On arriving at Angers, Louis found the Empress Hermengarde dying; and two
days afterwards she was dead. He had a tender heart, which was not proof
against sorrow; and he testified a desire to abdicate and turn monk. But
he was dissuaded from his purpose; for it was easy to influence his
resolutions. A little later, he was advised to marry again, and he
yielded. Several princesses were introduced; and he chose Judith of
Bavaria, daughter of Count Welf (Guelf), a family already powerful and in
later times celebrated. Judith was young, beautiful, witty, ambitious,
and skilled in the art of making the gift of pleasing subserve the
passion for ruling. Louis, during his expedition into Brittany, had just
witnessed the fatal result of a woman's empire over her husband; he was
destined himself to offer a more striking and more long-lived example of
it. In 823, he had, by his new empress Judith, a son, whom he called
Charles, and who was hereafter to be known as Charles the Bald. This son
became his mother's ruling, if not exclusive, passion, and the source of
his father's woes. His birth could not fail to cause ill-temper and
mistrust in Louis's three sons by Hermengarde, who were already kings.
They had but a short time previously received the first proof of their
father's weakness. In 822, Louis, repenting of his severity towards his
nephew, Bernard of Italy, whose eyes he had caused to be put out as a
punishment for rebellion, and who had died in consequence, considered
himself bound to perform at Attigny, in the church and before the people,
a solemn act of penance; which was creditable to his honesty and piety,
but the details left upon the minds of the beholders an impression
unfavorable to the emperor's dignity and authority. In 829, during an
assembly held at Worms, he, yielding to his wife's entreaties and
doubtless also to his own yearnings towards his youngest son, set at
nought the solemn act whereby, in 817, he had shared his dominions
amongst his three elder sons; and took away from two of them, in Burgundy
and Allemannia, some of the territories he had assigned to them, and gave
them to the boy Charles for his share. Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis
thereupon revolted. Court rivalries were added to family differences.
The emperor had summoned to his side a y