Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/321

 The Emperor Charles V 301 of weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark mantle, and bearing a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his household, the spectator of his own obsequies ; and the doleful ceremony was concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of the priest, in sign of his surrender- ing up his soul to the Almighty." Within two months of this masquerade he was dead. And the brief greatness of the Holy Roman Empire died with him. His realm was already divided between his brother and his son. The Holy Roman Empire struggled on indeed to the days of Napoleon I but as an invalid and dying thing. To this day its unburied tradition still poisons the political air.