After repeated provocation, the arm of the Pope is uplifted to strike; but Henry, awed by his menaces, and by an insurrection in Saxony, hastens to avert the blow by an unreserved submission and the fairest promises.  He confesses, not only to have meddled in ecclesiastical matters, but to have unjustly stripped churches of their pastors—­to have sold them to unworthy subjects guilty of simony, whose very ordination was questionable—­and implores the Pope to begin the reform with the Cathedral of Milan, which is in schism by his fault.

Gregory pardons him; and, in 1074, holds his first council at Rome against simony and the incontinence of the clergy.  It was in this year that Henry, already pressed by the Saxons and Thuringians, found himself threatened by Salomon, King of Hungary.  In this emergency, he has recourse to Gregory, who, by an eloquent letter, calms the indignant Hungarian.

With the year following, the campaign against Saxony begins.  This brave but turbulent people had risen against the towns in possession of Henry, and burned the magnificent Cathedral at Hartzburg.  Here again the Pope secured to the king the powerful assistance of Rodolph, Duke of Suabia, in conjunction with whom the royal army obtains a decisive victory at Hohenburg.  But once in security and crowned with success, the graceless monarch forgets his submission, and exclaims, “It does not befit a hero, who has vanquished a warlike people, struggling in defence of what they hold most sacred, to bow humbly down before a priest, whose only weapon is his tongue!” Faithless to his recorded vow in the hour of danger, he nominates Henry, canon of Verdun, to fill the see vacated by the Bishop of Liege; and, soon after, calls to the see of Milan, Theobald, his own chaplain, in place of the murdered Herlembaud.  Thus repeatedly deceived, Gregory must strike at last, or sacrifice the independence of the Church of God to human weakness.

It was in the pause between these new indignities and the consecration of Hidolphe in the archbishopric of Cologne, that Father Omehr and Gilbert rode slowly on toward the Castle of Hers.

The conversation naturally turned from the consideration of impending evils, to the miserable feud actually existing between the two houses of Hers and Stramen.

“I sincerely wish it were ended,” said Gilbert, in reply to a vehement denunciation just pronounced by his companion.  “I could willingly forgive all the injuries I have received at their hands, when I remember the kindness of the Lady Margaret.”

The priest looked quickly up in the young man’s face, but Gilbert was gazing with an abstracted air upon the blue outline of the beautiful Lake of Constance, which just began to appear to the south.

“It were far better,” he said, commanding the youth’s attention by taking his hand—­“it were far better to forgive them when you remember the prayer of your dying Jesus for His persecutors, than out of gratitude to the ordinary courtesy of a pitying damsel.”