"The Crusaders! They are back from the Holy Land!" is the affrighted cry that goes up from the gathering of noble ladies and knights congregated at the Court of Love, and taken by surprise by their homing husbands.
The latter mistake the cry for a welcome, and run across the bridge shouting joyfully: "Yes, dear wives! We are back from the Holy Land! Eleven we departed, and eleven we return, thanks to the miraculous protection of the Lord!"
"And of the good St. Arnold, the patron of deceived husbands!" added Goose-Skin aside, as he profited by the tumult created by the new arrivals to slip into the avenue with the trouvere. "What a droll and lucky accident! It is the return of the eleven husbands of your eleven sweethearts that saves you from the ire of that crowd! I shall split my sides with laughter!"
Thanks to the general commotion, the trouvere and the juggler make good their escape, while the eleven doughty crusading knights gladfully call their noble wives to them. The Canoness Deliane, being the only unmarried one of the twelve who met in the orchard of the Lady of Ariol, remains behind. The eleven wives rush into the arms of the valiant crusaders, who, blackened as moles and dusty as tramps, rejoice in the embrace of their faithful spouses.
The first ebullitions of joy having somewhat subsided, Abbot Reynier, clad in the long white robe of the monks of Citeaux, ascends the throne that was until recently occupied by Marphise, the Queen of the Court of Love; commands silence, and, like a new Cuckoo Peter, as Peter the Hermit was popularly called, prepares to spread a new Crusade—this time at home. The Crusade that he has in contemplation is not to the Holy Land. The faith now calls for a raid upon the heretics of the south of Gaul. Silence reigns, and Abbot Reynier, the sycophantic debauchee, who, driven by his concupiscence, only the evening before clandestinely crept into the close of the mill of Chaillotte, addresses the assembly, not in the savage and fiery language of Peter the Hermit, but in measured words, cold and trenchant as the iron of an axe:
"I have accompanied hither the seigneurs Crusaders, who, anxious to meet their chaste wives, hasten to this place where we find the most illustrious seigneurs of Touraine assembled. Ye noble seigneurs, learned trouveres and noble ladies who hear me, the time is past for frivolous games. The enemy is at our gates. The province of Languedoc has become the hot-bed of an execrable heresy, that is slowly invading the rest of Gaul, and menaces the three sanctuaries, arch-sanctuaries of the land—the Church, the Royalty and the Nobility. The wildest of these heretical miscreants, worse by far than the Saracens themselves, take their arguments from the primitive Evangelium and deny both the authority of the Church and the privileges of the seigneurs; they declare the equality of men; they brand as a theft all wealth in the hands of those who did not produce it; worst of all they hold that 'the serf is the equal of the seigneur, and that he who does not work neither shall he eat'!"
Several Nobles' Voices—"This is infamous! This is insanity! To death with the miscreants!"
Abbot Reynier—"It is insanity, it is infamous; furthermore, it is dangerous. The sectaries of this heresy gain daily new proselytes. Their leaders, who are all the more vicious and pernicious seeing they affect to practice the reforms that they preach, acquire in that way a detestable influence over the populace. Their pastors, who replace our own holy Catholic priests, have themselves called 'Perfects.' Finally, in their infernal criminality, they seek to render their own lives exemplary! It is high time that they be exterminated!"
Several Nobles' Voices—"The wretches! The hypocrites! To death with the felons!"
Abbot Reynier—"Languedoc, that fertile region that abounds in wealth, is in a frightful condition. The Catholic clergy are despised; the royal authority is hardly recognized; the nobility is no less humbled than the Church herself, and, shocking to say! unheard-of outrage! the nobility of the region is almost wholly infected by the damnable heresy. Everywhere replaced by popular magistrates, and stripped of all special privileges, the seigneurs are confounded among the common people. Serfdom no longer exists in that country; the nobility works its fields in common with their tenants. Counts and viscounts are seen there engaged in commerce like bourgeois, and growing rich by traffic! Finally, and as if to cap the climax of abomination, the nobility frequently marries Jewish wives, the daughters of opulent merchants!"