23: l'abbé Jean Trithème. Johannes Tritheim, born in 1462 at Trittenheim, near Trier, was a Benedictine monk, who became abbot of St. James in Würzburg, where he died in 1516. He wrote a number of semi-historical works, and had a reputation for supernatural wisdom.
24: comte de Limburg. Limburg was a duchy, west of Aachen, now divided between Belgium and the Netherlands.
25: gardien capitulaire, guardian of the tomb of Charlemagne, by appointment of the monastic chapter which had it in charge.
26: SCENE II. This is one of the most powerful passages in Victor Hugo's writings. It would be hard to say to what extent the sentiments here expressed were his personally. At any rate, it is a grandiloquent exposition of the imperial idea. As Mr. H.A. Perry remarks, the poet is evidently thinking, and with intense sympathy, of the aspirations of Napoleon I. and his ambition to subject the Pope to himself. It is in this scene that Charles is represented as changing from a headstrong, frivolous, undisciplined libertine into a grave man made noble by a sense of responsibility. It may be questioned whether so sudden a transformation is possible, and certain it is that in the play the Charles of the preceding part is not the same man as he who emerges from the tomb of Charlemagne. It is improbable that the mere heightening of a weak, bad man's ambition would make him good and great in half an hour. But such contrasts are Hugo's delight.
27: un monde créateur, meaning the Middle Ages, as an epoch fertile in great institutions.
28: le hasard corrige le hasard, means that whatever the oppression of the time, it is probable that the people will have a friend either in the Pope or the Emperor, and if one is tyrannical the other may be clement.
29: toujours l'ordre éclate, «order still springs forth».
30: Qu'une idée, au besoin des temps, un jour élose. «Let but a thought, in the fulness of time, some day burst forth.»
31: Se fait homme, «becomes incarnate».
32: These lines are packed with meaning, the principal idea being that the will of the people and the will of God will from time to time find personification in an elective Pope or an elective Emperor, and triumph over hereditary sovereigns and time-honored prerogatives.