[Illustration: Karl IV. mit der Kaiserin Anna.
LIKENESS TAKEN FROM CHAPEL IN CARLSTEIN.]
But in the fragment of autobiography which Charles has left us, he has himself supplied the clue to at least some part of this difficulty. That residence in Paris, and intimacy with the King of France, which was to John merely a new opportunity for self-indulgence and luxury, gave to Charles both that interest in the higher education of a people which was of so much service to Bohemia, and a personal zeal for study which doubtless saved him from many of the evils which surrounded him. The King of France took a great fancy to his young namesake; and, though he and most of his family were ignorant of literature, he saw the value of it for others, and urged his chaplain to encourage Charles in his studies. Paris was at that time the centre of learning. It contained the most completely organised University, except that of Bologna; and it attracted students from many parts of Europe. The influence of the king’s chaplain doubtless developed in Charles that reverence for the clergy and the pope which was, perhaps, more of a real moral conviction in him than in any prince of his time. He was also fortunate in the ease with which he acquired new languages; and this gift enabled him to recover his power of speaking Bohemian without losing his knowledge of German. Whence he could have derived that intense Bohemian feeling, which showed itself in all the more important acts of his life, sometimes even to the prejudice of his work as German Emperor, it is very difficult to say; but, doubtless, the fervent and practical piety, which always distinguished him, led him to cling to such traditions as he could gather about the mother of whom he had seen so little; and the zeal for her country, when he saw the wrongs inflicted on it by his father, would have been quickened in him by that hatred of injustice and oppression which was so strong an element in his character. But, be the causes what they may, certain it is that the first important use which he made of his double power of Bohemian king and German emperor was to lay the foundations of a scheme for making Prague the intellectual centre, not only of Bohemia, but of the whole Empire.