Charlemagne went to Rome to spend the Holy Week. He entered it in triumph on the 2nd of April, 774. A grand procession of bishops and nobles went out to meet him at Novi, and accompanied him to St. John at the Lateran, where Adrian waited to receive him. The crowd hailed him as a preserver. He was surrounded by banners and crosses; people of distinction vied for the honour of carrying his victorious arms; and little children, dressed in ancient costume, strewed flowers in his horse’s path. The Pope and the Emperor embraced, and the latter, after having taken the sacrament, visited, attended by his suite, all the sacred spots in the great capital of the Christian world. A council was called, at which one hundred and fifty-three bishops and priests assembled to assist the Pope in conferring on Charlemagne the most extensive powers and privileges. During this time famine was making fearful havoc in Pavia. Every day people died of starvation in hundreds, but the town did not surrender. Charlemagne was not one who liked to see work long about. He quitted Rome and assumed the command of the army, and a few days after Didier was forced to surrender. Neither his courage nor his submission could appease the Emperor, and the conquered prince, his head sprinkled with ashes, had to kneel to his new lord. The last of the Lombard kings became a monk, and finished his days, under the name of Brother Desiderat, in the monastery of Corbie. Ansa, his wife, the two sons of Carloman, and Gerberge their mother, with Desiderade, the divorced wife of the King of the Franks, all fell into Charles’s hands, and he condemned them to the cloister. Lombardy was thus made the property of the crown of France. [Illustration: 105] Aude and Mita had retired to Paris, where they awaited mournfully the return of Roland and Miton. Here the Countess of Rennes gave birth to a marvellously beautiful boy, who was christened Mitis. Never was a baby made so much of. Nothing was good enough for him. The two women, left to themselves, formed endless projects, and counted with impatience the hours which seemed to pass so slowly. But one day the weeping attendants made their appearance, bearing the dead body of the little cherub. They related that a knight, with his visor closed, had attacked them and snatched the child from his nurse; that, without regarding their cries or supplications, he had made his way at full galop to a neighboring stream, where he had dismounted, and, thrusting the child into the water, had held it down with his foot for some minutes. Despite the threats he uttered they came up with him, but too late. The monster, having lifted the corpse ashore with his foot, remounted his horse and fled. [Illustration: 106] The two sisters were for a long time like a couple of mad women. So excessive was the grief of each that one might fairly have asked which was the mother of the murdered babe.