Two long years crept by, and the imperialists were still before Rome.  Gilbert looked anxiously for succor to Suabia and Saxony, but the sudden death of Otto of Nordheim laid his hopes in the dust, and Henry, for the third time, invested the eternal city.  Hitherto, the Romans, encouraged by the Pope, had made an heroic resistance, and the besiegers had suffered incredibly from their desperate sallies, as well as from the diseases that decimated them.  But the fidelity of the citizens was beginning to totter beneath the protracted warfare, and many sighed for a period to their calamities.  Henry failed not to profit by these dispositions, and poured in thirty thousand golden florins to inflame them.

The horizon grew darker and darker—­the Pope more winning, more eloquent, more determined.  Matilda did not fail him in this crisis.  The knight of the azure cross had already won the confidence of the princess by his valor, his prudence, and his piety, and she now selected him as the instrument of her generosity.  She pointed to a large amount of silver, saying that she intrusted him with the dangerous and difficult duty of conveying it to Gregory.  Gilbert gladly accepted the perilous commission.  He loaded a number of mules with the treasure, concealed beneath vegetables, and disguising himself as a peasant, took a guide and set out for Rome.  During a dark and stormy night he contrived to pierce the hostile lines and enter the city by the Lateran gate.

Gilbert found the Pope seated in the midst of an assembly.  He could at last feast his eyes upon the wonderful and sainted man whom he had all his life loved and venerated.  When the Pontiff rose and spoke of the virtue and fortitude that ought to sustain them in this crisis, he seemed endowed with supernatural power, and moved all present to tears.  It seemed as though his soul foreknew it was the last time his voice should be raised in defence of his grand and holy cause.

Another year passed by; the festival of Easter was approaching.  Henry was meditating a return to Germany, when a deputation of the citizens arrived in his camp, offering to surrender the capital.  The Lateran gate was opened, and the imperial army began to enter the city.  The Roman soldiers, finding themselves betrayed, flew to arms, and Gilbert de Hers was once more contending with the warriors he had met at Fladenheim and the Elster.  Godfrey de Bouillon fell wounded before the desperate resolution of the besieged, and as he was brought to his knee, vowed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  But, outnumbered and confused, the defenders were driven into the citadel, and Henry, with his queen at his side, entered in triumph.  The next day Guibert of Ravenna was installed in the Lateran palace in the See of St. Peter, and consecrated on the twenty-fourth of March, by the bishops of Modena and Arezzo.  His first act was to crown King Henry in the Vatican.  Gregory retired to the castle of San Angelo, and the giddy populace