chronicler; ’all honours are mine; I hold at once both Pope and King, the princes of Italy and those of Gaul, those of Rome, and those from far beyond the Alps.’  The stage was ready; the audience had assembled; and now the three great actors were about to meet.  Immediately upon his arrival at Canossa, Henry sent for his cousin, the Countess Matilda, and besought her to intercede for him with Gregory.  He was prepared to make any concessions or to undergo any humiliations, if only the ban of excommunication might be removed; nor, cowed as he was by his own superstitious conscience, and by the memory of the opposition he had met with from his German vassals, does he seem to have once thought of meeting force with force, and of returning to his northern kingdom triumphant in the overthrow of Gregory’s pride.  Matilda undertook to plead his cause before the Pontiff.  But Gregory was not to be moved so soon to mercy.  ’If Henry has in truth repented,’ he replied, ’let him lay down crown and sceptre, and declare himself unworthy of the name of king.’  The only point conceded to the suppliant was that he should be admitted in the garb of a penitent within the precincts of the castle.  Leaving his retinue outside the walls, Henry entered the first series of outworks, and was thence conducted to the second, so that between him and the citadel itself there still remained the third of the surrounding bastions.  Here he was bidden to wait the Pope’s pleasure; and here, in the midst of that bitter winter weather, while the fierce winds of the Apennines were sweeping sleet upon him in their passage from Monte Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt barefoot, clothed in sackcloth, fasting from dawn till eve, for three whole days.  On the morning of the fourth day, judging that Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit would not be granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of S. Nicholas, which stood within this second precinct.  There he called to his aid the Abbot of Clugny and the Countess, both of whom were his relations, and who, much as they might sympathise with Gregory, could hardly be supposed to look with satisfaction on their royal kinsman’s outrage.  The Abbot told Henry that nothing in the world could move the Pope; but Matilda, when in turn he fell before her knees and wept, engaged to do for him the utmost.  She probably knew that the moment for unbending had arrived, and that her imperious guest could not with either decency or prudence prolong the outrage offered to the civil chief of Christendom.  It was the 25th of January when the Emperor elect was brought, half dead with cold and misery, into the Pope’s presence.  There he prostrated himself in the dust, crying aloud for pardon.  It is said that Gregory first placed his foot upon Henry’s neck, uttering these words of Scripture:  ’Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis, et conculcabis leonem et draconem,’ and that then he raised him from the earth and formally pronounced his pardon.  The prelates and nobles who took part in this scene were compelled to guarantee with their own oaths the vows of obedience pronounced by Henry; so that in the very act of reconciliation a new insult was offered to him.  After this Gregory said mass, and permitted Henry to communicate; and at the close of the day a banquet was served, at which the King sat down to meat with the Pope and the Countess.