"Death to the bandit, who would cut off the feet and hands of the avengers of Christ!" several voices cried out. "Death to him! Death!"
"Yes, death!" yelled the serfs of the village, who had made up their minds to depart for the Holy Land, and who abhorred the bailiff. "Death to Garin the Serf-eater! He shall eat none more!" With that, Colas the Bacon-cutter threw him from his horse, and in a moment the bailiff, trodden under foot, was slaughtered and torn to pieces. The serfs broke his bones, cut off his head, and Colas the Bacon-cutter, taking up the livid head of the Serf-eater with the prong of his pitch-fork, raised the bleeding trophy above the mob. Carrying it on high, he rejoined the troop of the Crusaders, whereupon the crowd marched away singing at the top of their voices:
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their happiness! You will be our delight!
"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!
"God wills it! God wills it! God wills it."
PART II.
THE CRUSADE.
CHAPTER I.
THE SYRIAN DESERT.
The sun of Palestine inundates with its blinding and scorching light, a desert covered with reddish sand. As far as the eye reaches, not a house is seen, not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass, not a pebble. Not a sparrow could find shelter in this vast expanse. Everywhere a shifting sand, fine as ashes, radiates back in more torrid temperature the heat imparted to it by that flaming sun, vaulted by a fiery sky that dips in the western horizon into a zone of burning vapor. Here and yonder, half buried in the waves of sand that are periodically raised by the gales of these regions, appear the whitened bones of men and children, horses, asses, oxen and camels. The flesh of these bodies has been devoured by vultures, jackals and lions. The Saracen proverb is verified: "The Christians find here shelter only in the belly of the vultures, the jackals and the lions!" These decomposing human and other débris trace across the desert the route to Marhala, a city situated ten days' march from Jerusalem,—the holy city toward which converge the several armies of the Crusaders from Gaul, Germany, Italy and England, marching to the conquest of an empty tomb.