between the King and the Pontiff as to the disposal of her property, and which would afford Henry a pretext for war. She exhausted the resources of her fertile brain for a solution of the difficulty, and finally decided to follow the course she had pursued in the reign of the preceding Pope that of making a public ratification during her lifetime of the gift she had already made of her estates to the Church. By taking this precaution she secured the independence of her provinces from German control, and evinced her love for the Holy See by strengthening the hands of the Pontiffs.1 Again the donation was disputed by the King, "on the ground that most of the fiefs given by the Countess were appendages of the imperial authority. These rival pretensions were a new spark of war between the papacy and the empire." 2 Henry's late defeats in Italy and recurring revolts at home rendered him this time unable to gain his point by attacking Matilda. He therefore contented himself with the utterances of threats of the punishment which before long he intended to inflict upon the Pope and upon his cousin. Moreover, he was at this juncture placed in a desperate situation, from which he seemed unable to extricate himself, and in which his pride and self-love were acutely wounded. The nobles, weary of his tyranny and impiety, gladly welcomed any leader who would embrace their cause, and such a one was found in the royal household. Scarcely had the King avenged himself for the rebellion of Conrad than his second son placed himself at the head of the rebels and entered the lists against him. Henry had caused the youth, who was his favourite and namesake, and who, in many respects, closely resembled himself, to be crowned at Aix 1 Fifteen years after "the Great Countess" had passed to her rest, Pope Innocent II., on the coronation of Lothair, "transferred the bequest to the Emperor for his lifetime, on payment of one hundred pounds, to the Pontiff and his successors. Even this stipulation was not a lasting one, and after a long-continued struggle the greater part of the gift was by arrangement ceded to the Church." 2 Chevalier D'Artaud de Montor. Prince Henry Rebels la-Chapelle ere he had reached the age of nineteen. This unusual step was taken in order to exclude Conrad, the proscribed heir, from succeeding to the crown he had attempted to wrest from his father. The King reserved to himself the rights and power of royalty during his lifetime, and, warned by experience, caused the prince to take a solemn oath that he would not interfere in the affairs of the kingdom until after his father's death. This public acknowledgment of young Henry as next in succession was a great mistake, and served, if not to create, at least to awaken in his breast feelings of pride and personal jealousy of the King. During the six years which had elapsed since his coronation he had greedily coveted the "glittering emblems of royalty," and looked forward with almost feverish eagerness to the time when the crown should grace his brow and he should indeed be King-nay, more, Emperor of the West. This aspiring young prince, now in his twenty-third year, is described by a contemporary as being "of a remarkably handsome appearance and full of manly enterprise." Among the many enemies which his father had made for himself Henry had no lack of partizans, and in a short time he found the greater part of the army at his command. He was fully aware of his father's waning popularity, and of the slender grasp with which he held the sceptre, and this made him the more determined to secure the prize for himself. The oath he had taken was disregarded, the plaudits of the multitude extinguished the last gleam of filial affection, and hushed the warning note which his brother's fate should have sounded in his ear. So intent was he on seizing the royal prerogative that no means, however cowardly or unjustifiable, were left untried in order to attain his end. When the King returned from the scene of his defeat in Tuscany he found his subjects in open revolt. He was not possessed of much depth of feeling, but he loved his son with all the affection of which he was capable. That he, of all his children, should turn against him was a source not of mere chagrin but of real unfeigned sorrow in which anger found no place. Instead of resorting to arms he resolved to make a personal appeal to his rebellious child, and with this pacific idea appointed a place of meeting not far from Coblentz, on the banks of the Moselle. When young Henry, in all the pride and beauty of early manhood, and elated with a new sense of power, appeared before him, the unhappy King flung himself to the earth in an agony of grief and shame. "Oh, my son, my son!" exclaimed the stricken monarch, in faltering accents which sobs and tears of bruised affection rendered almost inaudible. “My son, my son, if I am to be punished by God for my sins, at least stain not thine honour, for it is unseemly in a son to sit in judgment over his father's sins." At the sight of his parent kneeling as a suppliant before him, the prince's better nature awoke within him. He appeared to be overcome by remorse and contrition. Raising the prostrate King from his humble position, he begged his forgiveness, and with a friendly caress took leave of the weeping monarch. Henry himself, in a letter which he wrote to Philip I. of France, whose long and inglorious reign was nearing its close, thus describes the interview with his son: "As soon as I saw him I was affected to the very bottom of my heart, as much by paternal affection as by sorrow. I threw myself at his feet, supplicating and conjuring him, in the name of his God, his religion and the salvation of his soul, although my sins might have merited punishment from God, to abstain from sullying on my account his hands, his soul and his honour, for never law, human or divine, had authorised sons to be the avengers of the faults of their fathers." 1 Alas! ambition and the influence of self-seeking counsellors soon changed the prince's feelings. On their representations 1 Sismondi. A Fallen Monarch he repented that he had allowed his father to go free, and now gave orders for his immediate arrest and imprisonment. No sooner had the King congratulated himself upon the success of his meeting with his son than he was surrounded and hurried off to prison. His gaolers were deaf to all his promises to reward them if he were set at liberty, and endeavoured "by vigorous and harsh treatment to compel him to sign his own abdication." Driven from his throne, Henry quitted Germany and wandered about Flanders for several months, often so poor that he was forced to seek relief from the Church, whose enemy he had been. "Never in the days of history," remarks Donizo, "has human pride, the abuse of power, the combination of tyranny and weakness, been punished by more cruel degradation." His son-in-law, Frederick, on whom he had bestowed the duchy of Suabia, vacant by the death of Rudolph, made an attempt to rally the German princes round the fallen King, but his efforts were in vain. Henry's mis-used authority had departed for ever. The obsequious and excommunicated prelates, who held their benefices by simony, deserted his cause and stood aloof from the monarch who had befriended them. Of all those whom he had loaded with favours not one came forward to offer him a shelter or to administer to his necessities. CHAPTER XIV "O thou voice within my breast! Have all deceived me and betrayed me? LONGFELLOW. IN Italy there was one who, had she known of the straits to which her relative was reduced, would with generous and forgiving spirit have come to his aid. As the Great Countess had given a home to Conrad, the exiled heir to the German throne, so now her womanly sympathy would prompt her to offer a hospitable asylum to his father, who, by a strange retribution, had also been deprived of his crown. However unwilling the Tuscans would be to have in their midst the monarch who had caused them so much tribulation, for Matilda's sake they would pay to him that deference due to the rank of the humbled sovereign. She "whose whole life was one unvaried example of virtue, justice, benevolence and truth," by her well-earned influence with the Holy See, would have procured for him the solace of reconciliation with the Church, and the consolations of religion in his dying hours. Banished from the hollow pomps and vanities of Court life, his heart might even yet respond to his cousin's kindly administrations, and his painful history thus have had a happier ending. Matilda, however, was in ignorance of the extent of Henry's misfortunes, for although flying reports had reached her of his deposition, she could scarcely give credit to the wild rumours which were spread broadcast with regard to her unfortunate kinsman. In Germany, also, there yet remained a firm and faithful |