e enticed them to the shore by requesting them to
take on board his wife and treasures, which had been left at Rossano,
and that he sent young men on board disguised as female attendants of
his wife, by whose aid he seized the vessel. All the stories agree,
however, in saying that Theophania jeeringly asked the emperor whether
her countrymen had not put him in mortal fear,--a jest for which the
Germans never forgave her.

To return to the domain of fact, we have but further to tell that the
emperor, full of grief and vexation at the loss of his army, and the
slaughter of many of the German and Italian princes and nobles who had
accompanied him, returned to upper Italy, with the purpose of collecting
another army.

All his conquests in the south had fallen again into the hands of the
enemy, and his work remained to be done over again. He held a grand
assembly in Verona, in which he had his son Otho, three years old,
elected as his successor. From there he proceeded to Rome, in which city
he was attacked by a violent fever, brought on by the grief and
excitement into which his reverses had thrown his susceptible and
impatient mind. He died December 7, 983, and was buried in the church of
St. Peter, at Rome.

The fancy of the chroniclers has surrounded his death with legends,
which are worth repeating as curious examples of what mediaeval writers
offered and mediaeval readers accepted as history. One of them tells the
story of a naval engagement between Otho and the Greeks, in which the
fight was so bitter that the whole sea around the vessels was stained
red with blood. The emperor won the victory, but received a mortal
wound.

Another story, which does not trouble itself to sail very close to the
commonplace, relates that Otho met his end by being whipped to death on
Mount Garganus by the angels, among whom he had imprudently ventured
while they were holding a conclave there. These stories will serve as
examples of the degree of credibility of many of the ancient chronicles
and the credulity of their readers.

_THE FORTUNES OF HENRY THE FOURTH._

At the festival of Easter, in the year 1062, a great banquet was given
in the royal palace at Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine. The Empress Agnes,
widow of Henry III., and regent of the empire, was present, with her
son, then a boy of eleven. A pious and learned woman was the empress,
but she lacked the energy necessary to control the unquiet spirits of
her times. Gent