"My child! They have not hurt you?" Joan was thinking only of her child, one of whose hands she had seized and was kissing while weeping with joy, and running beside her husband. At that moment the chant of the Crusaders' departure resounded from afar with renewed fervor: "Jerusalem! City of marvels!"
"What songs are these?" inquired the quarryman. "What big crowd is that, gathered yonder? Whence come all these people?"
"Those are people who are going, they say, to Jerusalem. A large number of the inhabitants of the village are following them. They are like crazy!"
"Then we are really saved!" exclaimed the quarryman, seized with a sudden thought. "Let's depart with them!"
"What, Fergan!" demanded Joan out of breath and exhausted with her precipitate gait. "We to go far away with our child!"
But the serf, who found himself at the most a hundred paces from the village, made no answer, and followed by Joan, he finally reached the crowd, into the midst of which he dived, holding Colombaik and exhausted with fatigue, while, muttering to his wife: "Oh, saved! We are saved!"
Garin, who had continued driving his horse along the trench until he reached a spot where he could cross, observed with astonishment the crowd of people that blocked his way and access to the village. Drawing near, he saw coming towards him several of the serfs who preferred their crushing servitude to the chances of a distant and unknown voyage. Among these was old Martin the Prudent. Seeking to flatter the bailiff, he said to him trembling: "Good master Garin, we are not of those rebels who dare to flee from the lands of their seigneur to go to Palestine with that troop of Crusaders, that are traveling through the country. We do not intend to abandon the domain of our seigneur. We wish to work for him to our last day."
"S-death!" cried out the bailiff, forgetting the quarryman at the announcement of the desertion of a large number of the serfs. "The wretches who have thought of fleeing will be punished." The crowd, opening up before the horse of Garin, he reached the monk and Walter the Pennyless, who were pointed to him as the chiefs of the Crusaders. "By what right do you thus enter with a large troop upon the territory of my seigneur, Neroweg VI, sovereign Count of Plouernel?" Then, raising his voice still more and turning to the villagers: "Those of you, serfs and villeins, who had the audacity of following these vagabonds, shall have their hands and feet cut on the spot, like rebels——"
"Impious man! Blasphemer!" exclaimed Cuckoo Peter breaking in upon the bailiff in a thundering voice. "Dare you threaten the Christians who are on the march to deliver the tomb of the Lord? Woe be unto you!——"
"You frocked criminal," the bailiff in turn interrupted, boiling with rage, and drawing his sword, "you dare issue orders in the seigniory of my master!" Saying which, Garin, driving his horse towards the monk, raised his sword over him. But Peter the Hermit parried the move with his heavy wooden cross, and struck the bailiff such a hard blow with it over his casque, that the latter, dazed for a moment, let fall his sword.