For a moment stillness; then Peter broke forth again: "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! Awake as in the ancient time, in the generations of old! Then shall the redeemed of the Lord return, and come singing into Zion; and they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away!"
Then there was a strange thing. The people did not cry out, the moaning was hushed, all kept motionless; and the hermit stood holding up the crucifix, with his hand outstretched in benediction!--
"To Clermont!" was his command; "to Clermont, men of Auvergne! There you shall have rest for your souls!"
He went down from the little rising, and the people again began to flock about him. But he called for his mule, and when he mounted it, made away, though the crowd pressed close, and found holy relics in the beast's very hairs. Richard had been stirred as never before in his whole life. Was it true that all the world was guilty and sinful even as he? He felt himself caught in a mighty eddy, bearing he knew not whither; he, one wavelet amid the sea's myriads. Yes, to Clermont he would go,--Musa, Mary Kurkuas, honor, life,--he would give them all if need be, only to have his part in the war ordained by God.
Under the dead craters of the Monts Dôme in the teeming Limagne basin lay Clermont, a sombre, lava-built town, with muddy lanes; and all around, the bright, cold, autumn-touched country. Far beyond the walls stretched a new city,--tents spread over the meadows even; for no hospitable burghers could house the hundreds of prelates and abbots come to the council; much less the host of lay nobles and "villains." Daily into the Cathedral went the great bishops in blazing copes, and the lordly abbots beneath gold-fringed mitres, to the Council where presided the Holy Father,--where the truce of God was being proclaimed between all Christians from each Wednesday set-of-sun till Monday cockcrow, and where Philip of France and his paramour Queen Bertrade were laid under the great anathema. But no man gave these decrees much heed; for when Richard Longsword rode into Clermont on a November day, and pitched his tents far out upon the meadows,--all near space being taken,--he wondered at the flash in every eye at that one magic word, "Jerusalem!" All had heard Peter; all burned for the miseries of the City of Our Lord; knew that their own sins were very great. From Pérignat to Clermont, Richard accompanied a great multitude, growing as it went. After he had encamped, the roads were still black with those coming from the north, from Berri; from the west, from Aquitaine; from the east, from Forez. One could hear the chatter of the Languedoil, of the Ile de France, and of Champagne--all France was coming to Clermont!