"The distance is from sin to safety!" bellowed Cuckoo Peter. "The road is short for the believers, endless for the impious! Are you a Christian or a miscreant? Are you an idolater or a good Catholic?"
Colas the Bacon-cutter, finding himself, no more than some other serfs who still hesitated, sufficiently instructed by the monk's answer on the distance of the journey, asked again: "Father, it is said to be a long ways from here to Nantes. Is it as far to Jerusalem?"
"Oh, man of little faith!" answered Peter the Hermit, "dare you measure the road that leads to Paradise and to the Holy Virgin?"
"By the four swift feet of my good horse, the Sun of Glory! They are thinking of the length of the road!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless. "See here, my friends, does the bird that escapes from its cage inquire the length of the road when it can fly to freedom? Does not the ass in the mill, turning his grindstone, and tramping from dawn to dusk in the same circle, travel as much as the stag that roves through the woods at pleasure? Oh, my good friends, is it not better, instead of, like the ass of the mill, incessantly to tramp this seigniorial soil unto which you are chained, to march in search of adventures, free, happy like the stag in the forest, and every day see new countries?"
"Yes, yes," replied Colas, "the stag in the forest is better off than the ass in the mill. Let's depart for Palestine!"
"Yes, let's depart for Palestine!" the cry now went up from several other villagers. "On to that land of marvels!"
"My friends, be careful what you do," insisted Martin the Prudent. "The ass in the mill at least receives in the evening his meager pittance. The stags of the forest do not pasture in herds, hence they find a sufficiency in the woods. But if you depart with this large troop, which swells as it marches, you will be thousands of thousands when you reach Jerusalem. Who, then, my friends, will feed you? Who is to lodge you on the road? Who is to furnish you with clothes and footwear?"
"And who is it that lodges and feeds the birds of the good God, man of little faith?" Cuckoo Peter exclaimed. "Do the birds carry their provisions with them? Do they not raid the harvests along their route, resting at night under the eaves of the houses? Answer, ye hardened sinners!"
"By the faith of the Gibbet-cheater, you may trust that man!" here put in Corentin. "As truly as Perrette is a daisy, our route from Angers to this place has been but one continuous raid to us big birds on two legs. What feasts we have had? Poultry and pigeons! Hams and sausages! Pork and mutton! Tons of wine! Tons of hydromel! By my belly and my back, we have raided for everything on our passage, leaving behind us but bones to gnaw at and empty barrels to turn over!"
"And if those people were to complain," added Perrette the Ribald with her usual outburst of laughter, "we would answer them: 'Shut up, ninnies! Cuckoo Peter has read in the holy books that 'the goods of the sinner are reserved for the just!' Are not we the just, we who are on the march to deliver the holy tomb? And are not you sinners, you who stay here stagnating in your cowardice? And if these ninnies said but a word, the Gibbet-cheater, backed by our whole band, would soon have convinced them with a thorough caning."