disguise of humility. The ladies on either side were related to each other, and all belonged to that close circle of the reigning class, in which every man calls his neighbour brother or cousin. Hugo of Cluny was the godfather of the king and loved him, and Adelaide, though on the side of her son-in-law, and now his eager champion, was a true and faithful daughter of the Church. Henry declared on the other side to his anxious friends that the accusations of the Germans were not true, that he was not as they had painted him: and implored their intercession with the Pope, not for any temporal advantage, but solely to be delivered from the anathema which weighed upon his soul. And Matilda and the others were but too anxious to make peace and put faith in all he said. It is very likely that Gregory believed none of these protestations, but now or never, certainly he was bound to fulfil his own maxim, and not to turn back his sword from the blood. All the arguments of Henry's friends could not induce him to grant an easy absolution at the king's first word. Finally he consented to receive him as a penitent, but in no other character. Probably it was while the prayers and entreaties of Matilda and of Abbot Hugo were still going on in the castle that Henry came day by day, barefooted, in a humble tunic of woollen cloth, and waited at the gates to know the result. It was "an atrocious winter," such as had never been seen before, with continual snowstorms, and the rugged paths and stairs up the cliff, never easy, were coated with frost. Twice over the king climbed with naked feet as far as the second circle of the walls, but only to be turned away. It seems little short of a miracle that such a man, in such circumstances, should have so persevered. On the third day the pleaders within had been successful, and Henry was admitted, on the generous guarantee of Matilda, who took upon her to answer for him that his repentance was genuine. At last the culprit was led into the Pope's presence. He was made to give various promises of amendment, which were accepted, not on his oath, a last and supreme humiliation, but on the undertaking of various of his friends who swore, rashly one cannot but think, on the relics of the saints that the king would keep his promises. This is the document to which these generous friends set their seals.