ROSWITHA THE NUN
in the bent-back furrows, hidden beneath the wings of Ceres. Hither and thither forsooth he traversed the very spot where she lay, burdened with no little fear, and although, with great effort, he essayed with outstretched spear to part the corn around, yet he discovered not her whom by the grace of Christ it concealed.
From the sheltering corn Adelheid effects her escape, and after weary wandering, reaches the Castle of Canossa, the stronghold of the Counts of Tuscany. Any one who has visited this now ruined castle, some twenty miles from Parma, will remember the threadlike way between rocks covered with brambles, by which its eyrie height is approached. Up this steep track the queen, fearful of any pause, hastens, and finds a welcome and ready help. The Count becomes her champion, and appeals on her behalf to the Emperor Otho. The latter, glad of an excuse to further his cause in Italy, descends with his troops into the Lombard plain, weds the beautiful Adelheid, and receives the formal cession of the so-called kingdom of Italy from Berengarius and his son, whose power had ebbed away in their futile attempts to control their feudatories.
Roswitha's thrilling narrative is amplified by the graphic account recorded by St. Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, Queen Adelheid's friend and one-time confessor. In this he tells us that during Adelheid's imprisonment in a castle on the Lago di Garda, her chaplain Martin succeeds in making a hole in the wall, through which the queen and her maidservant, disguised as men,
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