But Gilbert often declined the invitation of the forester to fly the falcon, rarely indulging in his favorite amusement.  He preferred to wander along the borders of the magnificent Lake of Constance, or to loiter among the neighboring hills, and watch, from some bare peak, the broad-winged vulture sailing slowly and steadily through the skies.  He would watch it until it became a mere speck in the blue distance:  we may often catch ourselves gazing after receding objects as though they were bearing away a thought we had fixed upon them.  His wound was nearly well, and the freshness of health was again in his cheeks; but his spirit had lost a part of its sprightliness, and he seemed to have grown older.  He did not evince his former relish for the manuscripts of Herman, but his visits to the chapel were more frequent and lasted longer.  Thus, day after day, he would study the lake, the clouds, and the cliffs, neither fearing an attack from the men of Stramen, nor meditating one against them.

We shall leave him in his inactivity, to trace the progress of events which form one of the most important and exciting periods in history.

Rodolph was not a moment too soon in concentrating his power; for Henry IV, flushed with his recent victory over the Saxons, had called at Goslar a diet of the princes of the empire, under the pretext of deciding, in their presence, the fate of their Saxon prisoners.  Only a small minority of the princes obeyed the summons; but the real object of the king became evident when he made them swear to exalt, upon his own death, Conrad his son, a minor, to the throne.  In the meantime, the news of the nomination of Hidolph, as successor to the sainted Anno, had spread to Rome.  The Pope beheld with profound sorrow the obstinacy and ambition of the king.  Henry was not to be driven from his purpose by the universal contempt this nomination excited, and he replied to the repeated remonstrances of the citizens of Cologne, that they must content themselves with Hidolph or with a vacant see.  And his firmness triumphed over the popular indignation; for Hidolph was invested by the king with the crozier and the ring, and finally consecrated Archbishop of Cologne.

But his victory was not complete.  He had yet to cope with an adversary more formidable than popular opposition; one who would not yield to temporal tyranny the watch-towers and guardian rights of spiritual liberty.  That adversary was Gregory VII.  Already the tremendous threat had issued:  “Appear at Rome on a given day to answer the charges against you, or you shall be excommunicated and cast from the body of the Church.”  But the infatuated monarch, too proud to recede, hurried on by his impetuous arrogance, and by the unprincipled favorites and corrupt prelates who shared his bounty, loaded the Papal legates with scorn and contumely, and drove them from his presence.