"This miserable serf has gone crazy," muttered the seigneur of Plouernel to himself. "He may, perhaps, forget to kill me."
"Our troop left Gaul, as I said, sixty thousand strong, under the lead of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. On the road the inoffensive inhabitants were pillaged, ravaged and massacred to the cry of 'God wills it!' Deceived on the length of the journey and in their ignorance, hardly had the Crusaders left Gaul, when, at the sight of each new town they asked: 'Is that Jerusalem?' 'Not yet,' answered Cuckoo Peter, 'we must march on!' And we marched. At the start it was a joy, a delirium, a triumphal procession! Serfs and villeins were the masters. People fled and trembled at our approach. The 'soldiers of Christ' sacked or burned the towns, set fire to the harvests, killed the cattle that they could not drag along, slaughtered old men and children, raped the women and then cut them to pieces, heaped up booty, and from city to city repeated the question: 'Is not that Jerusalem, either?' 'Not yet!' answered Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. 'Not yet! March on, march on!' And we marched. The strangers, at first taken by surprise, allowed themselves to be pillaged and massacred by the 'soldiers of the faith.' But, soon apprised by report of the ravages committed by the Crusaders and of their ferocity, these were fought with determination, and so effectively were they cut down, that our troop, consisting of more than sixty thousand people at the start, numbered at its arrival in Constantinople only five or six thousand survivors. During the journey through Asia Minor and Palestine, that number was reduced by one-half through battles, the pest, hunger, thirst and fatigue. Among the survivors, some, seized and kept for serfs of the new seigniories of Edessa, Antioch or Tripoli, have been forced to cultivate these lands for the seigneurs under the killing sun of the Holy Land. Others, and I am of the number, preferring freedom to renewed servitude, risked their lives in order to continue their march to Jerusalem. Some expect to find considerable booty in the Holy City; others imagine they will gain Paradise by rescuing the tomb of Christ. Of them all, I alone wish to reach Jerusalem, in order to see the places where, now a thousand and odd years ago, my ancestress, Genevieve, witnessed the death of the young man of Nazareth. This is how was accomplished the pilgrimage of those thousands of serfs and villeins, whose bones mark a long trail from the frontiers of Gaul to this place. Fatality drove them. They were forced to move on, or perish on the road. Thus, myself, fleeing from your seigniory to escape your gaolers, would but have been exposed to renewed servitude had I stopped in Gaul. Beyond the frontiers, to separate myself from the Crusaders, and take my chances with my wife and child among nations in arms against the 'soldiers of the cross,' would have been insanity. There was no choice but to march, and march again. Moreover, miserable as it was, yet our vagrant life was no worse than the life of serfdom. That's how it happened, Neroweg, that we meet here in the desert where you are mine, just as in your seigniory I was yours,--at my will and mercy, in life and death. Do you understand?"