disaffected provinces to meet him at Mayence; but his
earnest prayers are disregarded. Finding his advances indignantly
rejected by the princes of Upper Germany, and seeing that his prelates
were rapidly deserting him, he addresses himself to the task of
conciliating the Saxons. He employs every artifice to excite Otto of
Nordheim against the two sons of Geron--menacing Otto's own sons, whom
he held as hostages, in case the father refused. But the noble Saxon
replied, that he would stand or fall by his country. Though signally
foiled in all his schemes, Henry was still at the head of a numerous and
veteran army, and he boldly advanced upon the marches of the Misne, to
give battle to the sons of Geron. The Saxons did not wait an attack, but
sallied forth to meet the monarch. The Mulda, swollen with the recent
rains, alone separated the hostile armies, when the king, seized with a
sudden panic, ordered a hasty retreat, and fell back upon Worms, where
he gave himself up to a lively regret and the gloomiest forebodings.

The Saxons exulting in their first success, wished to revive the league
with Suabia; but first besought the Holy See to indicate which side they
should espouse. Gregory's saintly and heroic reply displays the pure
motives by which he was animated in excommunicating the king, and which
continued to govern his conduct throughout the contest. He cannot
recommend the anathematized monarch to the embraces of the Saxons--nor,
on the other hand, does he entirely commend the self-interested zeal of
Rodolph. He wishes to humble the king without exalting his adversaries--
to reform the empire without a civil war. Had he possessed a particle
of the lofty ambition which has sometimes been ascribed to him, this was
the moment to attach the Saxons to the Suabian confederacy, and give a
death-blow to the Franconian line. But instead of an animated
exhortation to arms, in the name of outraged religion, the magnanimous
Pontiff writes: "Forget not, I pray you, the frailty of human nature;
and remember the piety of his father and his mother, unequalled in our
time." Gregory's respect for Henry's parents seems to have inspired him
with the charitable hope, which never deserted him, that the king would
renounce his vices and return to virtue. It is well to keep this in
view, since it is easier, after an inquiry into the struggle between
them, to justify the severity than the lenity of the Holy See.

The fifteenth of October ha