"And now, my friends, what see you here?," resumed the Gascon adventurer, touching with the point of his sword the second picture on his shield. "Here is our very man, one time poor! You do not recognize him. I do not wonder, he is no longer the same, and yet it is himself, round of cheeks, clad like a seigneur and bursting his skin. Beside him lies a beautiful female Saracen slave, while at his feet a male Saracen comes to surrender his treasure! Well, now, my friends, this man, once so poor, so ragged at home, is you, is I, is all of us, and that same friend so plump, so sleek, so well clad, that, again, will be you, will be I, will be all of us, once we are in Palestine. Come, then, on the Crusade! Come and deliver the tomb of the Saviour! The devil take the rags, the rickety huts, the straw litters and the black bread! Let ours be marble palaces, silk robes, purple carpets, goblets of delicious wines, full purses, and beauteous Saracen women to rock us to sleep with their songs! Come to the Crusade!"
"Come, come!," cried out Cuckoo Peter. "If you are guilty of robbery, of arson, of murder, of prostitution, if you have committed adultery, fratricide or parricide—all your sins will be remitted. Come to the Crusade! Do you need an example, my brothers? William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, an impious fellow, a ravisher, a debauché who counts his crimes and adulteries by the thousands, William IX, that bedeviled criminal, departs to-morrow from the city of Angers for Palestine, white as a paschal lamb."
"And I, white as a swan!" interjected Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. "God wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
"And I as white as a dove!" said Perette the Ribald, with a peal of laughter. "God wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
"Yes, yes; let's depart on the Crusade!" cried out the more daring of the villagers, intoxicated with hope. "Let's depart for Jerusalem." Others, less resolute, less venturesome, and of these was the larger number, took the advice of Martin the Prudent, fearing to stake their fate, whatever their present misery, upon the cast of a dangerous voyage and of unknown countries. They deemed insane the exaltation of their fellows in servitude. Finally, others, still hesitated to take so grave a step, and Colas the Bacon-cutter addressed Walter the Pennyless: "To depart is easy enough. But what will our seigneur say to that? He has forbidden us to leave his domains on pain of having our feet cut off. And he will surely have the order carried out!"
"Your seigneur!" answered the Gascon adventurer breaking out in a horse-laugh. "Scorn your seigneur as you would a wolf caught in a trap! Ask these good people who follow us whether they have bothered about their seigneurs!"
"No, no, the devil take the seigneurs!" cried out the Crusaders. "We are going to Jerusalem. God wills it! God wills it!"
"What!" put in Cuckoo Peter, "the Eternal wants a thing, and a seigneur, a miserable earthworm will dare oppose His will! Oh, desolation! Eternal malediction upon the seigneur, upon the father, upon the husband, upon the mother, who would dare resist the holy impulse of their children, their wives, their serfs, who run to the deliverance of the tomb of the Lord!"
These words of Peter the Hermit were received with acclamation by the Crusaders. The beautiful Yolande and her lover, Eucher, as well as other loving couples, cried out in emulation and louder than the others: "God wills it! There is no will above his!"
"Master Walter the Pennyless," resumed Colas the Bacon-cutter, scratching the back of his ear, "is it far from here to Jerusalem?"