after her as a dog after a bitch and the dotehead was beside himself and
whole out of his mind: insomuch that when the whore was dead he could
not depart from the dead corpse but caused it to be embalmed and to be
carried with him whithersoever he went, so that all the world wondered
at him; till at the last his lords accombered with carrying her from
place to place and ashamed that so old a man, so great an emperor, and
such a most Christian king, on whom and on whose deeds every man's eyes
were set, should dote on a dead whore, took counsel what should be the
cause: and it was concluded that it must needs be by enchantment. Then
they went unto the coffin, and opened it, and sought and found this ring
on her finger; which one of the lords took off, and put it on his own
finger. When the ring was off, he commanded to bury her, regarding her
no longer. Nevertheless he cast a fantasy unto this lord, and began to
dote as fast on him, so that he might never be out of sight; but where
our Charles was, there must that lord also be; and what Charles did,
that must he be privy unto: until that this lord, perceiving that it
came because of this enchanted ring, for very pain and tediousness took
and cast it into a well at Acon [Aix la Chapelle], in Dutchland. And
after that the ring was in the well, the emperor could never depart from
the town; but in the said place where the ring was cast, though it were
a foul morass, yet he built a goodly monastery in the worship of our
lady, and thither brought relics from whence he could get them, and
pardons to sanctify the place, and to make it more haunted. And there he
lieth, and is a saint, as right is: for he did for Christ's Vicar as
much as the great Turk for Mahomet; but to save his holiness, that he
might be canonised for a saint, they feign that his abiding there so
continually was for the hot-baths' sake which be there." (_Works_, ed.
Parker Society, ii. 265.)

Burton in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part iii., Sect. 2, Memb. 3,
Subs. 5, briefly narrates the story.

In the first scene of the _Distracted Emperor_, l. 17, for the reading
of the MS. "Can propp thy mynde, fortune's shame upon thee!" we should
undoubtedly substitute "Can propp thy ruynde fortunes? shame upon thee!"

Dr. Reinhold Koehler of Weimar explains once for all the enigmatical
letters at the end of the play:--"The line denotes:

Nella fidelta finiro _la vita_.

For as the letters [Greeek: ph d ph n r]