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MATILDA "THE EMPRESS." 39 factress, and had built there a stone bridge over the Seine, esteemed one of the finest of that period. The last years of her life were spent in acts of charity and benevolence. The bounty she exhibited in her charitable donations exceeded that of any reigning monarch of the Christian world. At her death she bequeathed considerable sums to indigent and diseased persons, as well as to convents and churches, which sums were honorably paid by her son, who repaired to Rouen to behold her remains deposited, agreeably to- her wish, in the Abbey of Bee. King Henry erected to her memory a monument covered with plates of silver, which bore a Latin inscription, thus rendered in English : "By father much, spouse more, but son most blest, Here Henry's mother, daughter, wife doth rest." Arnulph, Bishop of Lisieux, who wrote the life of the empress, after speaking of her as a royal wife, mother, and daughter, says, that "glittering still more by the splendid light of her virtues she surpasses the good fortune both of birth and marriage."