Marguerite and Perette were both full of the beauty they had seen in the great glacier, on which they went with the guides: but it would not have done for a damsel of my rank, and really I saw no beauty in it from across the lake; it looked like a quantity of very dirty ice, with ashes scattered over it. But they said it was full of deep cracks or fissures, in which were the loveliest colours that human eye could see or heart imagine.
"Ah! I can guess now!" said Marguerite. "I could not think what Monseigneur Saint John meant when he said the city was gold like clear crystal. I know now. Damoiselle, in the glacier there are walls of light, the sweetest green shading into blue that my Damoiselle can possibly imagine: they must be like that, but golden. Ha! if my Damoiselle had seen it! The great nobles have not all the good things. It is well not to be so high up that one cannot see the riches of the good God."
She has the queerest notions!
Well!—we travelled on through Lombardy, and tarried a few days at Milan, whence we journeyed to Venice, which is the strangest place I ever saw or dreamed of, for all the streets are canals, and one calls for one's boat where other people order their horses. The Duke of Venice, who is called the Doge, was very kind to us. He told us at supper a comical story of a Duchess of Venice who lived about a hundred years ago. She so dearly loved ease and luxury that she thought it too much trouble to eat with her fingers like everybody else; and she actually caused her attendants to cut her meat into little pieces, like dice, and then she had a curious instrument with two prongs,[#] made of gold, with which she picked up the bits and put them in her dainty mouth. Only fancy!
[#] The first fork on record.
At Venice we embarked, and sailed to Messina, where most of the pilgrims for the Holy Land assemble, as it is the most convenient port. We did not go overland, as some pilgrims do, through the dominions of the Byzantine Cæsar;[#] but we sailed thence to Crete. I was rather sorry to miss Byzantium,[#] both on account of the beautiful stuffs which are sold there, and the holy relics: but since I have seen a spine of the crown of thorns, which the Lady de Montbeillard has—she gave seven hundred crowns for it to Monseigneur de Rheims[#]—I did not care so much about the relics as I might otherwise have done. Perhaps I shall meet with the same kind of stuffs in Palestine; and certainly there will be relics enough.
[#] The Eastern Emperor; his dominions in Europe extended over Greece and Turkey.
[#] Constantinople.
[#] The Archbishop.
From Crete we sailed to Rhodes, and thence to Cyprus. They all say that I am an excellent sailor, for I feel no illness nor inconvenience at all; but poor Bertrade has been dreadfully ill, and Marguerite and Perette say they both feel very uncomfortable on the water. At Cyprus is an abbey of monks, on the Hill of the Holy Cross; and here Amaury and his men were housed for the night, and I and my women at a convent of nuns not far off. At the Abbey they have a cross, which they say is the very cross on which our Lord suffered, but some say it is only the cross of Ditmas, the good thief. I was rather puzzled to know whether, there being a doubt whether it really is the holy cross, it ought to be worshipped. If it be only a piece of common wood, I suppose it would be idolatry. So I thought it more right and seemly to profess to have a bad headache, and decline to mount the hill. I asked Amaury what he had done.