r husband. After Henry's death, his
son, the Emperor Henry V., paid Matilda a visit in her castle of
Bianello, addressed her by the name of mother, and conferred upon her
the vice-regency of Liguria. At the age of sixty-nine she died, in
1115, at Bondeno de' Roncori, and was buried, not among her kinsmen at
Canossa, but in an abbey of S. Benedict near Mantua. With her expired
the main line of the noble house she represented; though Canossa, now
made a fief of the Empire in spite of Matilda's donation, was given to
a family which claimed descent from Bonifazio's brother Conrad--a
young man killed in the battle of Coviolo. This family, in its turn,
was extinguished in the year 1570; but a junior branch still exists at
Verona. It will be remembered that Michelangelo Buonarroti claimed
kinship with the Count of Canossa; and a letter from the Count is
extant acknowledging the validity of his pretension.

As far back as 1255 the people of Reggio destroyed the castle; nor did
the nobles of Canossa distinguish themselves in subsequent history
among those families who based their despotisms on the _debris_ of the
Imperial power in Lombardy. It seemed destined that Canossa and all
belonging to it should remain as a mere name and memory of the
outgrown middle ages. Estensi, Carraresi, Visconti, Bentivogli, and
Gonzaghi belong to a later period of Lombard history, and mark the
dawn of the Renaissance.

As I lay and mused that afternoon of May upon the short grass, cropped
by two grey goats, whom a little boy was tending, it occurred to me to
ask the woman who had served me as guide, whether any legend remained
in the country concerning the Countess Matilda. She had often,
probably, been asked this question by other travellers. Therefore she
was more than usually ready with an answer, which, as far as I could
understand her dialect, was this. Matilda was a great and potent
witch, whose summons the devil was bound to obey. One day she aspired,
alone of all her sex, to say mass; but when the moment came for
sacring the elements, a thunderbolt fell from the clear sky, and
reduced her to ashes.[12] That the most single-hearted handmaid of the
Holy Church, whose life was one long devotion to its ordinances,
should survive in this grotesque myth, might serve to point a satire
upon the vanity of earthly fame. The legend in its very extravagance
is a fanciful distortion of the truth.

* * * * *

_FO