drank poison,[1] which she had prepared, and died; deserving, had God so pleased, a nobler death: for he was unconquerable by the sword of an enemy, but fell a victim to domestic treachery. He was buried at Venusium in Apulia, having the following epitaph :
Who from the Capitol Rome's sovereign hurl'd.
No band collected could Alexis free,
Flight only; Venice, neither flight nor sea.
And since mention has been made of Hildebrand, I shall relate some anecdotes of him, which I have not heard trivially, but from the sober relation of a person who would swear that he had learned them from the mouth of Hugo abbat of Clugny; whom I admire and commend to notice, from the consideration, that he used to declare the secret thoughts of others by the prophetic intuition of his mind. Pope Alexander, seeing the energetic bent of his disposition, had made him chancellor[2] of the holy see. In consequence, by virtue of his office, he used to go through the provinces to correct abuses. All ranks of people flocked to him, requiring judgment on various affairs; all secular power was subject to him, as well out of regard to his sanctity as his office. Whence it happened, one day, when there was a greater concourse on horseback than usual, that the abbat aforesaid, with his monks, was gently proceeding in the last rank; and beholding at a distance the distinguished honour of this man, that so many earthly rulers awaited his nod, he was revolving in his mind sentiments to the following effect: "By what dispensation of God was this fellow, of diminutive stature and obscure parentage, surrounded by a retinue of so many rich men? Doubtless, from having such a crowd of attendants, he was vain-glorious, and conceived loftier notions than were becoming." Scarcely, as I have said, had he imagined this in his heart, when the archdeacon, turning back his horse, and spurring him, cried out from a distance, beckoning the abbat, "You," said he, "you have imagined falsely, wrongly deeming me guilty of a thing of which I am innocent altogether; for I neither impute this as glory to
