ROBERT, DUKE OF NORMANDY, CARRIED IN A LITTER TO JERUSALEM.
(FROM AN OLD ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT.)
The Duke did a great many foolish things; for one, he had his horses shod with silver shoes, held on by only one nail, and gave orders that none of his servants should pick up the shoes when they were cast, but let them lie in the road.
At last the pilgrims reached Constantinople, and Robert made a great display of his wealth, not to speak of his insolent bad manners. The emperor, Michael, treated his rude guests with true Eastern courtesy, and behaved himself much more honorably than those who despised him and called him names. He even paid all the expenses of the Norman procession, but, no doubt, he was anxious not to give any excuse for displeasure or disturbance between the Northerners and his own citizens. When the visit was over, and Robert moved on toward Jerusalem, his already feeble health, broken by his bad life, grew more and more alarming, and at last he could not take even a very short journey on foot, and was carried in a litter by negroes. The Crusades were filling the roads with pilgrims and soldiers, and travellers of every sort. One day they met a Côtentin man, an old acquaintance of Robert's. The Duke said with grim merriment that he was borne like a corpse on a bier. "My lord," asked the Crusader, who seems to have been sincerely shocked and doleful at the sight of the Duke's suffering; "my lord, what shall I say for you when I reach home?" "That you saw me carried toward Paradise by four devils," said the Duke, readier at any time to joke about life than to face it seriously and to do his duty. He kept up the pretence of travelling unknown and in [Pg129] disguise, like a humbler pilgrim, but his lavishness alone betrayed the secret he would really have been sorry to keep. Outside the gates of Jerusalem there was always a great crowd of people who were not able to pay the entrance-fee demanded of every pilgrim; but Robert paid for himself and all the rest before he went in at the gate. The long journey was almost ended, for on the way home, at the city of Nicæa, the Duke was poisoned, and died, and was buried there in the cathedral with great solemnity and lamentation. He had collected a heap of relics of the saints, and these were brought safely home to Normandy by Tostin, his chamberlain, who seems to have served him faithfully all the way.
