The short remainder of his life was spent in the humblest exercises of charity and devotion. He chose the place of his interment and often visited it with disciples, and his letters show him to have been incessantly occupied with the great thought of his approaching end. It came at last, and on the morning of Whitsunday, May 19, 804, the great scholar passed gently and happily to the eternity he had so long contemplated. Charlemagne mourned his death as that of a friend and master, and before his final departure addressed him some Latin verses, which, if not distinguished for much poetical merit, at least do justice to the honest affection that dictated them. He survived Alcuin ten years, and was buried in the royal “chapel”[88] that he had erected as the place of his sepulture, not reclining in a coffin, but seated on his throne, with the crown on his brow, the sceptre in his hand, his good sword Joyeuse by his side, and the book of the Gospels resting on his knees. And a brief inscription marked the spot where rested all that was mortal of “the great and orthodox emperor.”