It is a curious detail adding a touch to the irony which mingles with so many human triumphs and downfalls, that the actual imperial crown seems at one time at least to have been in Gregory's keeping. During the abortive council, for which, for three days he had returned to the Lateran, he offered, though he refused to place it on his head, to give it up to Henry's hands, letting it down with a cord from a window of St. Angelo. This offer, which could scarcely be other than ironical, seems to have been refused; but whether Gregory retained it in St. Angelo, or left it to be found in the Lateran treasury by the returning king, there is no information. If it was a fictitious crown which was placed upon Henry's head by the fictitious Pope, the curious travesty would be complete. And history does not say even why the ceremony performed before by the same hands on the banks of the Tiber, should have dropped out of recollection as a thing that had not been. During all this time nothing had been heard of Robert Guiscard who had so solemnly taken upon him the office of champion of the Holy See and knight of St. Peter. He had been about his own business, pursuing his conquests, eager to carve out new kingdoms for himself and his sons: but at last the Pope's appeals became too strong to be resisted. Henry, whose armies had doubtless not improved in force during the desultory warfare which must have affected more or less the consciences of many, and the hot summers, unwholesome for northerners, did not await the coming of this new and formidable foe. Matilda's Tuscans were more easily overcome than Guiscard's veterans of northern race. He called in his men from all the petty sieges which were wearing them out, and from that wall which he had forced the Romans with their own pitiful hands to build as a base of attacks against St. Angelo, and withdrew in haste, leaving the terrified citizens whom he had won over to his party, as little apt to arms as their forefathers had been, and in the midst of a half-ruined city--the strong positions in which were still held by the friends of the Pope--to do what they could against the most dreaded troops of Christendom. The catastrophe was certain before it occurred. The resistance of the Romans to Robert Guiscard was little more than nominal, only enough to inflame the Normans and give the dreadful freedom of besiegers to their armed hordes. They delivered the Pontiff, but sacked the town which lay helpless in its ruins at their feet; not even the churches were spared, nor their right of sanctuary acknowledged as six hundred years before Attila had acknowledged it. And all the fault of the Pope, as who could wonder if the sufferers cried? It was he who had brought these savages upon them, as it was he who had exposed them before to the hostility of Henry. Gregory had scarcely come forth from his citadel and returned to his palace when Rome was filled with scenes of