Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/178

188 of an insignificant figure, was able to inspire a young and beautiful woman, richly endowed with the wealth of this world and the gifts of mind, the heiress of the most beautiful lands of Italy. For his sake she rejected all offers of marriage, for his sake she became a heroine, drew the sword, headed more than one battle, and gave the signal for the fight. She stood by his side, gentle and beseeching, when the papal severity went too far in the desire to bend and humiliate the refractory;—thus she prayed for the Emperor Henry IV., when Gregory compelled him to do penance, barefooted, and in his shirt, outside the church door, in the winter season;—by his side she stood consoling and strengthening, when Gregory was assailed by the spirit of vengeance, which his pure but inflexible severity had called forth. She sacrificed to his idea, that of the outward dominion and sovereignty of the church, the power and the lands which she had inherited and held with honor. The arbitrary ruler made herself voluntarily a servant to the ecclesiastical prince, and her whole life was devoted to the object which he placed before her.

It was not until after the death of Gregory, when Matilda seemed to lose her fine and elevated bearing, not until after her fatherly friend and ruler was removed, that she listened to a proposal of marriage, and although then forty, allowed herself to marry quite a young prince, who had sought her hand for the sake of her hereditary lands, which he supposed her to possess. I do not know whether there exists a good biography of this Matilda. Certain it is that she