"Yes, yes!" responded the Crusaders. "That's right! That treasure must be the prize of the most valorous!"
"I shall not, then, be gainsaid by any," proceeded the Duke of Aquitaine, "when I proclaim that Heracle, the seigneur of Polignac, showed himself the bravest among the brave at the siege of this city." Cries of approval received William's words, who went on saying: "Heracle, seigneur of Polignac, yours is that treasure of beauty! Yours alone the privilege of unveiling that radiant aster that will dazzle us all!"
The seigneur of Polignac eagerly broke through the group of Crusaders, while Perrette exclaimed banteringly, affecting despair: "Oh, cruel man, you leave me for a miraculous beauty!" and catching the eye of William she cried out: "My handsome duke will console me for all my sorrows!"
"By Venus!" said William in great glee, "welcome to you, my ribald! Come to my arms, and all sensuous pleasure along with you!"
"Your Azenor will strangle me!"
"The devil take Azenor! Long live Love!"
During this short dialogue between the Duke of Aquitaine and Perrette, the seigneur of Polignac had approached the veiled woman, and raised the gauze that concealed from the eyes of all the prize of the most valiant. The surprise and discomfiture of the Crusaders were first expressed by mute stupor. Before them stood poor Joan the Hunchback, on her head an enormous red turban stuck with peacock's feathers, and a short skirt of the same color on her body, fastened at her waist and completely exposing her sad deformity. By her side, little Colombaik pressed himself close to his mother, and was dressed in a flowing tunic, his hair curled and perfumed, but his eyes and ears covered by a bandage. "I consent to serve as your toy, to endure all humiliations, seeing you have promised to provide for my child and not to separate me from him," were the words of Joan to Maria before lending herself to this cruel buffoonery; "but I insist, in the name of my dignity as mother, in the name of my child's chastity, to cover his eyes and ears, that he may not be a witness of his mother's degradation."
At sight of Joan the Hunchback, the Crusaders, first stupefied, soon broke out in loud peals of laughter, which were redoubled by the disappointment that Heracle of Polignac seemed to labor under. Still under the effects of his discomfiture, he gazed open-mouthed at Joan.
At that moment, livid, her features distorted with jealousy, Azenor was running from one Crusader to another, asking where William had gone to. But the seigneurs, half intoxicated and unconcerned at the sufferings of the love-sick woman, answered her with jests. "Let's carry the hunchback in triumph!" exclaimed several voices in the midst of deafening peals of laughter.
Joan paled with fear. Resigned beforehand to all sorts of jests and humiliations, she had not foreseen such an excess of indignity. Trembling and distracted, the poor woman dropped upon her knees and holding her child in her arms, she muttered amid sobs: "My poor child! Why did we not die with your father in the sands of the desert!" Already, despite Joan's tears, the Crusaders were seizing her, when a great uproar broke out in one of the chambers that opened into the gallery. Immediately, menacing and terrible to behold, Fergan the Quarryman threw himself into the middle of the hall armed with a cudgel and calling out loudly to Joan and Colombaik.
"Fergan!" "Father!" the woman and the child cried out together. At the sound of their voices, Fergan rushed across the group of Crusaders swinging his heavy stick and distributing such hard blows before him to the right and to the left, that the seigneurs, stunned and frightened, retreated precipitately before the serf. Beating his way through them, Fergan joined at last his wife and child, and pressed them to his heart in a passionate embrace. The domestics, thrown down, trodden under foot and half killed by Fergan, rose out of breath and explained to the seigneurs: "We were standing at the gate, playing chuck-farthing, when this madman ran up to us from the direction of the market-place. He asked us whether a hunchback and her child had been taken to the palace. 'Yes,' said we, 'and just now they are the amusement of the noble guests of our seigneur, the Duke of Aquitaine.' The madman then threw himself upon us, ran through the gate of the palace, struck us with his cane, and got here."
"He must be hanged on the spot!" the Duke of Normandy cried out. "These pillars will do for a gibbet. Fetch cords!"
"That bandit has dared to threaten us with his cudgel! He deserves the gallows!"
"Death to the criminal! Death!" cried out the Crusaders, now recovered from their first stupor, "Death to the vagabond!"
"But where is the Duke of Aquitaine? No one can be hanged here without his consent."
"He disappeared with the queen of the wenches. But his absence should not delay the execution of this wretch. When he returns he will find the vagabond hanging high and dry. William will ratify the sentence, and approve it."
"I shall give my belt for a rope."
After embracing his wife and child, Fergan took in at a glance the gravity of the situation, and observed that the seigneurs were not armed. Profiting by their first surprise, he had his wife and child climb on the banquet table and ordered them to stand with their backs against the marble edge of the basin. Thereupon, placing himself before them, his heavy cudgel in hand, he made ready for a desperate defence. But still wishing to try a last means of escape, he addressed the Crusaders, who were about to assault him: "For pity's sake, let me depart from this palace with my wife and child!"
"Listen to the bandit, praying for mercy! Quick! Let one of these pillars serve him for a gibbet. Swing a rope around his neck!"
"You may hang me!" cried out the serf in despair, "but more than one of you will have to fall under my cudgel!"
The threat rekindled the fury of the Crusaders. Already, braving the rapid swing of Fergan's cudgel, several seigneurs were rushing forward to seize the serf, when suddenly the braying of clarions was heard from afar, together with loud and nearing cries of: "To arms! The Saracens are upon us! To arms! To the ramparts!" Several men-at-arms of the Duke of Aquitaine rushed into the hall, sword in hand, and calling out: "The Saracens have profited by the night to surprise the city. They have entered near the gate of Agra by the breech that we made. They are fighting on the ramparts. To arms, seigneurs, to arms! Duke of Aquitaine, to arms!" Hardly had these men-at-arms pronounced the name of the duke in the midst of the increasing tumult caused by the announcement of this unforeseen attack, than William IX. appeared, his clothes in disorder, coming out of one of the chambers that opened into the gallery. He was pale and terror-stricken, and held in his hands a parchment, while he cried in a terrified voice: "A Jewess! A Jewess! Damnation!"
"William, arm yourself!" his companions called out to him, as they precipitately rushed out with the men-at-arms. "The Saracens are attacking the city! Let's run to the ramparts! To arms!"
"A Jewess!" repeated the Duke of Aquitaine with eyes fixed, his brow bathed in perspiration, and seeming neither to hear nor to see his companions in arms. Perceiving the legate of the Pope, William threw himself on his knees at the feet of the prelate: "Holy father, have pity upon me! I am damned! While I was chatting with the queen of the wenches, Azenor entered the chamber where we were and, holding out this parchment, said to me she was a Jewess, and that the parchment, written in Hebrew, furnished the proof. I have been a miserable sinner. Holy father, have pity upon me! I am damned! Mercy for my soul! Upon my knees I ask you for absolution!"
At dawn, the sun rose over the plain that surrounds the city of Marhala, surprised at night by the Saracens and defended by the Crusaders. The infidels, relying more on their audacity than on their numbers, perished almost to a man in the assault. Only a small number of prisoners were taken. The approaches of the breech in the ramparts, not far from the gate of Agra, through which the Saracens sought to surprise the city, disappeared under a heap of corpses. Clouds of vultures hovered over that abundant quarry, but dared not yet let themselves down on it. Men of prey were ahead of the birds.
These men, wholly naked, red and dripping blood, and hideous to behold, went and came like geniuses of death in the midst of that field of carnage. They would seize the body of a Saracen, strip it of its clothes, roll that in a bundle, and then, kneeling over the naked corpse, they pried open its jaws, rigid in death, carefully felt about in its mouth and under its tongue; finally, with the aid of long knives, they would cut open the corpse's gullet, chest and bowels, whose intestines they then pulled out and examined. Their faces, hands and members streaming blood, these demons were under the command of a chief. He gave orders and directed their sacrilegious profanations. They called him their king. It was Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, become chief of the vagabonds. His seneschal, one-time serf of the seigniory of Plouernel, was the identical Bacon-cutter, who, with a blow of his pitchfork had thrown Garin the Serf-eater from his horse just before the latter was butchered by the villagers.
The King of the Vagabonds and his seneschal gave token of rare dexterity in their shocking trade. The two had just seized, one by the head the other by the feet, the corpse of a young Saracen. His face, his rich raiment, hacked by sabre blows, the bodies of several Crusaders stretched on either side of him—all bespoke the fierce resistance the warrior must have offered. "Oh, oh!" said the King of the Vagabonds, "that dog must have been some chieftain, it can be seen by his embroidered green caftan. Great pity that his dress is so slashed to pieces; it might have served as a mantle for Perrette."
"You still think of the Ribald?" asked the Bacon-cutter, helping Corentin to strip the Saracen of his clothes; "your Perrette is in the Paradise of the wenches, on the crupper of some canon, or in the harem of some emir."
"Seneschal, Perrette would leave Paradise, an emir or a canon if the Gibbet-cheater told her to. Come. Our corpse is now naked. Make a bundle of the clothes. They will find purchasers in the market-place of Marhala. Now that we have taken the peel from this Syrian fruit," he added, pointing to the dead body, "let's open it. It is inside that the precious almonds must be looked for, such as besans of gold and precious stones. Give me your knife. I wish to sharpen it against mine. The blade of mine has been dulled on the gullet of that old Saracen yonder with the white beard. The devil! His cartilage was as tough as that of an old goat," and while his seneschal was bundling up some clothes, the King of the Vagabonds sharpened his knife, casting upon the corpses strewn around him looks of satisfied covetousness, and remarked: "That's what it means to get up early in the morning. After their night's fight, the Crusaders have gone to sleep. When they will come to plunder the dead, we shall be at the dice!"
"Great King! It is an easy matter to rise early if one has not gone to bed. We arrived in time to gather the harvest on this field of carnage."
"Will you, vagabonds, still reproach me for having induced you to leave the fortress of the Marquis of Jaffa?" replied the king, continuing to sharpen his knife. "Think of lying in a stronghold in order to play the brigand in Palestine! It was folly!"
"And yet, many of those new seigneurs who have left themselves down in the Holy Land as dukes, marquises, counts and barons, begin everywhere, just as they used to in Gaul, to ply the trade of highwaymen on the mainroads."
"With this difference, seneschal, that there are no high roads here, and hardly anybody to rob. One must roam over ten or twelve miles of sand or rocks in order to meet a few thin troops of travelers, who, instead of kindly allowing themselves to be plundered, like the townsmen and merchants of Gaul, but too often strike back, show their teeth and use them too."
"Great King! You speak wisely. Indeed, during those two months spent with the Marquis of Jaffa, we made but two sorry finds. At one of these, by the faith of the Bacon-cutter, we were warmly curried and rudely beaten, and all for almost nothing."
"In exchange, this fine Saracen quarry awaited us this morning at the gates of Marhala. Our work done, we shall take a dip in the fountain sheltered by yonder cluster of date trees. Thanks to the bath, we, who are now red as skinned eels, shall become again white as little doves, after which, having but to take the pick of these Saracen wardrobes, and our pouches well filled, we shall make our royal entry in the best tavern of Marhala."
"Where, mayhap, you will find again your queen, tapping for the customers and sleeping with them."
"May heaven hear you, seneschal, and may the devil grant me my prayers! Now, quick to work. The sun is rising. We are naked and run the risk of being roasted by the sun before we are through. The bath first, the feast afterwards."
"That word 'roasting' reminds me that this young Saracen is plump and of good muscle. In due time, what a fine mess would not a fillet of his large loins and round calves make, seasoned with some aromatic herbs and a pinch of saffron! Do you remember, among other ragouts, the head of that old sahib of the mountain, boiled with a certain peppery sauce?"
"Seneschal, my friend, you are altogether too talkative. Instead of incessantly opening your mouth, whence flow only vain words, open that of this Saracen, and perhaps beautiful besans of gold or diamond of Bossorah may roll out."
It was a shocking spectacle, like the violation of a sepulchre. The King of the Vagabonds took the head of the corpse between his knees, while the Bacon-cutter tried to force open the rigid jaws of the dead body. Unable to do so he said to Corentin: "That dog of an infidel must have been in a rage at the moment of expiring. His teeth are clenched like a vice."
"And that embarasses you, you gosling? Insert the blade of your knife between his teeth, flat, then turn it round. That will separate the jaws sufficiently to be able to insert your fingers." And while the Bacon-cutter was conducting his abominable researches obedient to the directions of Corentin, the latter remarked with a ferocious sneer: "Oh, ye miscreant Saracens, you have the malignity of hiding in the hollow of your cheeks gold pieces and precious stones, and even of swallowing them, to the end of depriving the soldiers of Christ of those riches!"
"Nothing!" exclaimed the seneschal with disappointment and interrupting the king, "nothing in the cheeks and nothing under the tongue."
"Have you felt carefully?"
"I have felt and felt over again, everywhere. Perhaps during this night's battle, some foxy Crusader, like a man of experience, have seized the throat of this Saracen at the moment when he expired and may thus have caused him to spit out the gold he was hiding in his mouth. Provided that dog did not swallow it all down."
"The scamp was capable of doing that. Feel about in his throat. After that we shall sound the chest and bowels." So said, so done. The two monsters put the corpse through a shocking butchery. Finally their ferocious cupidity was satisfied. After a series of revolting profanations, they withdrew from the bleeding intestines of the corpse three diamonds, a ruby and five besans of gold, small thick pieces but barely the size of a denier. While the two vagabonds were finishing their ghoulish work, black clouds of thick and nauseous smoke rose from a pyre, started close by, by the other vagabonds, with green branches of turpentine tree. These fellows, instead of disemboweling the corpses, burned them, in order to look among the ashes for the gold and precious stones which the Saracens might have swallowed. These monstrosities having been gone through, the vagabonds proceeded to the neighboring spring where they washed their bloody bodies, and donned their clothes again, or decked themselves with the spoils of the Saracens. The booty was then divided—clothes, arms, turbans, shoes—and they wended their steps towards the gate of Agra. At the moment of entering the city, the King of the Vagabonds, mounting a heap of ruins, said to his men, who gathered around him: "Vagabonds, my sons and beloved subjects! We are about to enter Marhala, with booty on back and bysantins in pocket. I expect, I will it, I order it, in the name of wine, dice and wenches, that, before leaving Marhala, we shall have become again as beggarly as the vagabonds that we are! Never forget our rule: 'A true vagabond, twenty-four hours after a pillage, must have nothing left but his skin and his knife.' He who keeps a denier becomes cold to the quarry. He is expelled from my kingdom!"
"Yes, yes! Long live our King! Three cheers for wine, dice and wenches!" responded the bandits. "The devil take the vagabond, who, rich to-day, keeps for the morrow aught but his skin and his knife! Long live our great King, Corentin the Gibbet-cheater!"
And the savage troop marched towards the gate of Agra and entered the city of Marhala shouting and singing: "Glory to the brave Crusaders!"
Luckily disentangled from the fury of the guests of the Duke of Aquitaine by the nocturnal attack of the Saracens, Fergan the Quarryman had profited by the confusion to escape from the Emir's palace with Joan and Colombaik. While the Crusaders were hurrying to the ramparts of the gate of Agra, the serf turned his steps with wife and child, far away from the spot of the battle. Before sunrise, quiet reigned again in Marhala. Descrying one of those numerous taverns, that generally sprang up after the capture of a city, and were set up in some Saracen house by the camp-followers of the army, Fergan stepped in. To the great astonishment of Joan, he pulled out of his belt a gold piece, which he exchanged with the tavern-keeper for silver coin, to pay for his lodging. Once more alone with his family, the quarryman could give a loose to his tender feelings and relate to them how, after being separated from them by the sand-spout, he found himself half buried under the sand, and losing consciousness. In the darkness of the night he was shaken out of his lethargy by a sharp scratch on his shoulder. It was a hyena, that, pawing up the sand under which he lay, prepared to devour him, taking him for dead, but instantly fled seeing him sit up. Thus, delivered from a double danger, the serf had wandered about during dark, amidst the mournful yelpings of the wild beasts at their quarry over the corpses that they dug up. At dawn he saw, already half devoured, the remains of Neroweg VI.
After vainly searching for Joan and his child, Fergan considered them lost forever, and followed the route marked out by the human bones. At the end of several hours' marching, he came across the corpse of some seigneur, to judge by the richness of his clothes, torn to shreds by the beasts of prey. Among the tatters was an embroidered purse full of gold. He appropriated it without scruple, and was soon joined by a troop of travelers bound for Marhala. He journeyed in their company. Upon his arrival in the city, and learning that several other travelers who escaped the disaster of the sand-spout had come in ahead of him, he inquired after a deformed woman with a child. A beggar, who had accidentally seen Joan and her son enter the palace of the Emir, gave him the information, and he was enabled to arrive in time to wrest them from the danger they were just threatened with.
After a recital of his adventures, and leaving his wife and Colombaik in the tavern, Fergan went out at sunrise to purchase some clothing at the market-place, where booty was constantly sold at auction. Fearing to be met by some of the guests of the Duke of Aquitaine, the serf had smeared soot mixed with grease over his face. Rendered thus unrecognizable, he entered the market-place. Instead, however, of finding the place occupied by traffickers in booty, he saw a large gang of men hastily engaged in the construction of a pyre under the overseership of several prelates. A cordon of soldiers, placed at a distance from the pyre, kept the inquisitive from drawing too near. Fergan had just elbowed himself to the front of the mob, when a deacon, clad in black, said aloud: "Are there among you any strong men who wish to earn two deniers, and help finish the pyre quickly? They shall be paid the moment the work is done."
"I shall help, if wanted," answered Fergan. Two deniers were worth earning. They would eke out his treasury.
"Come," said the priest, "you seem to be a lusty fellow. The faggots will weigh like straws on your broad shoulders." Five or six other wretches, having volunteered to join Fergan, the deacon took them to the center of the place, where, resting upon a large bundle of trunks of olive trees, palmettos and dried brushes, the pyre was being erected for the accomplishment of the miracle announced by Peter Barthelmy, the Marseilles priest and possessor of the Holy Lance. This Barthelmy derived a large revenue from his relic by exhibiting it for money to the veneration of the Crusaders. Other priests, jealous of the receipts pocketed by the Marseillan, had assiduously backbitten his lance. Fearing a decline of earnings, and wishing to furnish a proof of the virtue of his lance, and at the same time confound his detractors, he had promised a miracle. Fergan set to work with ardor to earn his two deniers. He soon perceived that a narrow path crossed the heap of kindling-wood, which, about thirty feet long and raised four or five feet on either side, sloped down towards the path that cut it in two. Thus, towards the middle and for a space about two yards wide, the pyre offered hardly any food to the fire. After a half hour's work, Fergan said to the deacon: "We shall make the heap even, and fill up the gap that crosses it, so that the pyre may burn everywhere."
"Not at all!" the deacon hastened to say. "Your work is done on this side. We must now set up the stake and adjust the spit."
Fergan, as well as his companions, curious to know the purpose of the stake and spit, followed the priest. A wagon hitched to mules, had just dumped several beams upon the place. One of these, about fifteen feet high, and furnished in some places with iron rings and chains, had at about its center a sort of support for the feet. Fergan's helpers followed the instructions of the deacon, and set up the stake at one of the corners of the pyre where the kindling wood was well heaped. Other workingmen placed not far away two iron X's, intended to support an iron bar about eight feet long and tapering into sharp points.
"Oh! oh! What a terrible looking spit!" said Fergan to the priest, placing the iron bar on the two X's with no little labor. "Are they going to roast an ox?" Instead of answering the serf, the deacon listened in the direction of one of the streets that ran into the place, and, hastily fumbling in his pockets, said to Fergan and the other men, while handing to each the promised wages: "Your work is done. You may now go. The procession is approaching."
Fergan and his assistants withdrew to the mob which the file of soldiers was holding back from the pyre. Church songs were heard, at first from a distance, but drawing ever nearer, and soon the religious procession issued into the market-place. Monks marched at the head, after them clergymen carrying crosses and banners, and then, in the midst of a group of high dignitaries of the Church, whose mitres and gold embroidered copes sparkled in the sun of the Orient, came the Marseilles priest, Peter Barthelmy, bare-footed and robed in a white shirt. He held up triumphantly in his hands the holy and miraculous lance. This contriver of miracles, of a countenance at once sanctimonious, artful and sly, preceded other prelates carrying banners. Azenor the Pale came next, clad in a long black robe, her hands bound behind and supported by two monks. She had been convicted of the abominable crime of being a Jewess. She was convicted of this enormity, not alone by the revelation that, in a paroxysm of jealousy, she had made to William IX., but also by the testimony of the parchment that she had handed to him in order to dispel his doubts. In that parchment, written in the Hebrew language and dating several years back, the father of Azenor urged his daughter to die faithful to the law of Israel. A few steps behind the victim, William IX., the Duke of Aquitaine, his hair in disorder and covered with ashes, dragged himself on his naked knees in abject penitence. Clad in a rough sack, his feet bare and dusty like his knees, and holding a crucifix in his two hands, the penitent cried out ever and anon in a lamenting voice, while smiting his chest with his fist: "Mea culpa, mea culpa! Lord God, have mercy upon my soul! I have committed the sin of the flesh with an unclean Jewess, I am damned without your grace! Oh, Lord, mea culpa! mea culpa!" On foot and in splendid raiment, the legate of the Pope and the archbishop of Tyre, marched on either side of the Duke of Aquitaine, repeating from time to time in a voice loud enough to be heard by the penitent:
"My child in Christ, trust in the mercy of the Lord! Render yourself worthy of His clemency by your repentance!"
"Remain faithful to your vow of chastity, you who were given to debauchery!"
"Remain faithful to your vow of poverty, you who were given to prodigality and magnificence!"
"Remain faithful to your vow of humility, you who were proud and arrogant!"
"But that will not suffice! You must surrender to the Church your earthly riches—lands, domains, castles, slaves—to the end that the priests may implore the Eternal for the remission of your transgressions and your numerous sins!"
Behind these followed a few Saracens who had been captured at the late night surprise of Marhala. They were led, pinioned, by soldiers. The King of the Vagabonds, his seneschal the Bacon-cutter and several of the men of their band had been joined to this escort by order of Bohemond, Prince of Taranto, and chief of the army, who himself closed the procession, accompanied by a large number of crusading seigneurs, casque on head and lance in hand.
This funeral train marched around the market-place, surrounded by an ever-swelling crowd, and ranked itself before the pyre, where the stake and the spit were in readiness.
"The miracle of the lance!" cried the crowd, impatient to see Barthelmy cross a flaming pyre in his shirt and without burning—"the miracle of the lance!"
"Woe is me!" muttered William IX., redoubling the blows with which he was lacerating his breast. "Woe is me! I am so great a sinner that perhaps the Eternal will not deign to manifest His omnipotence by a prodigy before me!"
"Be comforted, my son!" answered the papal legate. "The Eternal will manifest Himself in order to confirm your faith, seeing that you have been touched by grace, and humble yourself before His Church."
"Yesterday, father, I was an unclean criminal, an infamous evildoer, a miserable blind man. To-day my eyes are open to the truth. I see the everlasting flames that await me. Have pity upon me!"
"Give up all your goods to the Church, remain poor as Job, the Church will then intercede for your salvation," replied the legate, issuing his orders to his deacon to set fire to the pyre.
Immediately, walking almost without danger over the length of the path that crossed the paling, hidden by the height of the flames kindled at the four sides of the pyre, Peter Barthelmy seemed in the eyes of the credulous multitude actually to traverse the lake of fire. The serf saw, across a thick cloud of smoke that helped to increase the illusion, Peter Barthelmy, looking as if he was wading through flames up to the hip, run rapidly across the full length of the pyre, from which he emerged again brandishing his lance. The crowd, blind and fanatic, clapped their hands and shouted: "A miracle! A miracle!" Shocked at the impudence of the friar, who so shamelessly imposed upon the credulity of those poor people, Fergan decided to administer to him a stinging lesson. Affecting to yield to religious enthusiasm, he cried out: "Peter Barthelmy is a saint, a great saint! Whoever can secure the smallest bit of his clothing, or of his blessed body, even if but one hair, will be delivered of all ills!" The mob received Fergan's suggestion with fanatic approval. The file of soldiers, that held the multitude far enough back from the pyre, was broken through, and the most maniacal of these fanatics rushed upon Peter Barthelmy at the moment when, leaving the pyre a few steps behind him, he was brandishing his lance. An incredible scene ensued thereupon, related by Baudry, archbishop of Dole, an eye-witness of the occurrence, as follows in his "History of the Capture of Jerusalem:"
"When Peter Barthelmy emerged from the pyre with his holy lance, the crowd rushed upon him and trampled him under foot, each wishing to touch him and carry off a piece of his shirt. He received several wounds in the legs. Bits of flesh were cut from his body. His ribs were knocked in. His spine was fractured. He would, in our opinion, have died on the spot, had not Raymond, seigneur of Pelet, an illustrious cavalier, quickly gathered a platoon of soldiers, thrown himself with them into the midst of the mob, and, at the risk of his own life, saved poor Peter Barthelmy."
After this rude lesson given the cheat, Fergan approached the group of soldiers that were transporting the contriver of miracles in a dying state to a neighboring house. "The accursed brutes! The savages!" murmured the Marseilles priest, gasping for breath: "Have you ever seen such bedeviled rascals! The idea of wishing to turn me into relics!"
"It is but a condign punishment for the besotted state of mind that, with infamous calculation, you plunge these wretched people in," said Fergan leaning over Barthelmy. The Marseillan turned around with a sudden start, but the serf had disappeared in the crowd, and passed to the other side of the pyre, now fully ablaze. At one of its corners was Azenor, chained to the stake. Her feet rested on the tablet which the flames began to lick. A few steps from the victim, on his knees among the priests and joining them in their mortuary songs, crouched the Duke of Aquitaine, from time to time crying amid sobs: "Lord! Cleanse me of my sins! May my repentance and the just punishment of this unclean Jewess earn grace for me!"
"Ah, William!" cried out the condemned woman with a voice still strong and penetrating, "I feel the heat of the flames. They are about to reduce my body to ashes. These flames are less consuming than those of jealousy. Yesterday, driven to extremity, I made certain of my vengeance. A few instants of suffering will rid me of life, and your credulous stupidity avenges me. Look at yourself now, brilliant Duke of Aquitaine, the sport of priests, your implacable enemies, and the dupe of those who laugh at your imbecile fears! If there is a hell we shall meet there."
"Silence, you infamous and unclean beast!" cried out the legate of the Pope, "the flames that envelop you are as nothing to the everlasting fires where you are to burn through all eternity. A curse upon your execrable race, that crucified the Saviour of the world!"
"A curse upon the Jews! Death to the Jews! Glory to God in heaven and to his priests on earth!" shouted the spectators.
Suddenly, heart-rending screams rose above the din. Azenor the Pale, writhed with pain under her iron fetters as the flames, reaching her limbs, set her robe and long hair on fire. Presently the stake at which she was chained caught fire under her feet, swayed in the air for an instant, tumbled over into the furnace, and disappeared there with the victim in the midst of a wild flare of flames. The Duke of Aquitaine then embraced the knees of the papal legate and appealed to him imploringly: "Oh, my father in Christ, I vow to relinquish all my goods to our holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church! I vow to follow the Crusade barefooted in a sack! I vow to bury myself in the depths of a cloister upon my return to Gaul! I vow to die in the austerities of penance, to the end that I may obtain from God the remission of my sins and evil ways!"
"In the name of the All-Powerful, I take cognizance of your vows, William IX., Duke of Aquitaine!" responded the legate in a ringing and solemn voice. "Only the observance of these vows can render you worthy of a day of celestial mercy, thanks to the intercession of the Church!" And the Duke of Aquitaine, bent low at the feet of the legate, his forehead in the dust, repeated his protestations and lamentations, while the King of the Vagabonds, stepping out of the file of soldiers that surrounded the Saracen prisoners, and accompanied by his seneschal the Bacon-cutter, approached the legate, saying:
"Holy father in God, I have come with my seneschal and a few of my subjects for the purpose of spitting one of those Saracen miscreants over the fire. You have but to deliver the victim to me."
"That belongs to Bohemond, Prince of Taranto," the legate answered the King of the Vagabonds, pointing with his finger to a group of crusading seigneurs who had just witnessed the miracle of Peter Barthelmy and the death of Azenor the Pale. The Prince of Taranto approached Corentin and speaking in a low voice led him to the side where the iron spit lay placed on the iron X's. Then, drawing near the escort that surrounded the prisoners, the prince made a sign. The soldiers parted ranks, and five bound Saracens faced Bohemond and the other Crusaders. Two of these prisoners, a father and son, were particularly remarkable, one by his noble and calm face, framed in a long white beard, the other by the bold and juvenile beauty of his lineaments. The old man, wounded in the head and arm at the night attack, had torn a few pieces of his long mantle of white wool to bandage his and his son's wounds. Their superb scarfs of Tyrian wool, their silk caftans, embroidered with gold, although soiled with blood and dust, announced the rank of the chiefs. Thanks to an Armenian priest, who served as interpreter, they held the following discourse with the Prince of Taranto, who, addressing himself to the old man, said:
"Were you the chief of those infidel dogs who attempted to surprise the city of Marhala by night?"
"Yes, Nazarean; you and yours have carried war into our country. We defend ourselves against the invaders."
"By the cross on my sword! vile miscreant, dare you question the right of the soldiers of Christ to this land?"
"The same as I inherited my father's horse and black tent, Syria belongs to us, the children of those who conquered it from the Greeks. Our conquest was not pitiless like yours. When Abubeker Alwakel, the successor of the Prophet, sent Yzed-Ben-Sophian to conquer Syria, he said to him: 'You and your warriors shall behave like valiant men in battle, but kill neither old men, women nor children. Destroy neither fruit trees nor harvests. They are presents of Allah to man. If you meet with Christian hermits in the solitudes, serving God and laboring with their hands, do them no harm. As to the Greek priests, who, without setting nation against nation, sincerely honor God in the faith of Jesus, the son of Mary, we used be to them a protecting shield, because, without regarding Jesus as a God, we venerate him as a great, wise man, the founder of the Christian religion. But we abhor the doctrine that certain priests have drawn from the otherwise so pure doctrine of the son of Mary.'"
These words of the old emir, absolutely in keeping with the truth, and that contrasted so nobly with the cruelty of the soldiers of the cross, exasperated Bohemond. "I swear by Christ, the dead and resurrected God," he cried out, "you shall pay dearly for these sacrilegious words!"
"Be faithful to your faith, even unto the peril of your life, said the Prophet," the Saracen replied. "I am in your power, Nazarean. Your threats will not keep me from telling the truth. God is God!"
"The truth," added emir's son, "is that you Franks have invaded our country, ravaging our fields, massacring our wives and children, profanating the corpses!"
"Silence, my son!" resumed the emir in a grave voice. "Mahomet said it: The strength of the just man is in the calmness of his reasoning and in the justice of his cause." The young man held his peace, and his father proceeded, addressing the Prince of Taranto: "I told you the truth; I feel sorry for you if you are ignorant of, or deny it. Our people, separated from yours by the immensity of the seas and vast territories, could not harm your nation. We have respected the hermits and the Christian priests. Their monasteries rise in the midst of the fertile plains of Syria, their basilicas glisten in our cities beside our mosques. In the name of Abraham, the father of us all—Musselmen, Jews and Christians—we have welcomed like brothers your pilgrims, who came to Jerusalem to worship the sepulchre of Jesus, and his wise men. The Christians exercised their religion in peace, for Allah, the God of the Prophet, said through the mouth of Mahomet, the Prophet of God: Injure no one on account of his religion. But our mildness has emboldened your priests. They have incited the Christians against us; they have outraged our creed, pretending theirs alone is true and that Satan inspired our prayers. We long remained patient. A thousand times the stronger in numbers, we could have exterminated the Christians. We limited ourselves to imprisoning them. Those of your priests who outraged us and sowed discord in our country, were punished according to our laws. You then came by the thousands from beyond the seas, you invaded our country, and you have let loose upon us the most atrocious ills. Our priests then preached a holy war; we have defended ourselves, and we shall continue to do so. God protects the faithful!"
The calmness of the old emir exasperated the Crusaders. He would have been torn to pieces, together with his son and companions, but for the intervention of Bohemond, who with gesture and voice reined in the seigneurs. Addressing himself thereupon to the Saracen by means of the interpreter, he said: "You deserve death a hundred times, but I forgive you!"
"I shall report your generosity to my people."
"Be it so! But you shall also say to them: 'The Prince governor of the city and the seigneurs have to-day decided in council that all Saracens, henceforth captured, shall be killed and roasted, to serve as meat with their bodies to the seigneurs as well as to the army.'"[C]
The Prince of Taranto, while speaking and acting like a cannibal, was following the inspiration of an atrocious policy. He knew that the eating of human flesh inspired the Mahometans with extreme horror, seeing they professed for their dead a religious veneration. Accordingly, Bohemond expected to conjure up such fear among the Saracens that it would paralyze their resistance, and they would no longer fight, fearing to fall dead or alive in the hands of the soldiers of Christ, and be devoured by them.[D]
At the order of the Prince of Taranto, the King of the Vagabonds seized the emir's son, and, while the soldiers held the other prisoners back to compel them to witness the revolting spectacle, the young Saracen was slaughtered, disembowelled, spitted and broiled over the burning embers of the pyre that had just been the theatre of the miracle of Peter Barthelmy and of the death of Azenor the Jewess; and in the presence of the crusading seigneurs, of the legate of the Pope and of the clergy, the Saracen youth was devoured by the band of Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, assisted by the other wretches, whom a fury of fanatical self-glorification drove to join the anthropophagous feast. This done, the father of the victim and his companions were freed from their bonds and set at liberty, a liberty, however, that the old man did not profit from. He dropped dead on the spot with grief and horror. Another Saracen went crazy with horror; the other two fled distracted from the fated city.
The frightful scene was hardly over, when messengers from Godfrey of Boullion arrived, notifying Bohemond to depart with his troops without delay, and join under the walls of Jerusalem the main army of Godfrey, who had just begun the siege of the Holy City.
Immediately the trumphets were sounded in Marhala; the cohorts formed themselves; and the army of the Prince of Taranto leaving a garrison behind in the Saracen city, set out on the march for Jerusalem, singing that now well-known refrain of the Crusaders, which was re-echoed in chorus by the mob that followed in the wake of the army:
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You are the object of the vows of the angels! You constitute their happiness! 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!"
Fergan left the city with wife and child clad in new raiment, thanks to the purse he had found in the desert. An ass carried their provisions—a large pouch of water and a bag of dates. He also took precautions of arming himself for defence against marauders. To drop out of the stream of the Crusaders would at that season have been insanity. After the capture of Jerusalem, large numbers of Crusaders were expected to return to Europe, taking ship at Tripoli on Genoese or Venetian vessels. Fergan's little treasure would enable him to pay for the passage of himself and family to either of those cities, whence he planned to cross Italy, return to Gaul and settle down at Laon in Picardy, where he confidently expected to find Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich and joint descendant with the quarryman of Joel, the ancient Gallic Chief. Fergan felt a lively desire to see Jerusalem, the city where, over a thousand years before, his ancestress Genevieve had witnessed the agony of the carpenter of Nazareth, that humble artisan, that great and kindly sage, the friend of the slaves, of the poor and of the afflicted, the enemy of hypocrite priests, of the rich and of the powerful of his days. Joan and Colombaik alternately rode the ass when they were tired. The serf experienced a rare pleasure at seeing for the first time his wife and child properly clad, and steadily regaining the strength they had lost by their recent fatigues and privations.
They followed the wake of the army. At its head marched a band of cavaliers carrying the banner of St. Peter, the disciple of Jesus. Behind Peter's banner came the train-bands under the command of their respective seigneurs, carrying the banner of each seigniory embroidered with coat-of-arms, or war cries, such as: "To Christ, the Victorious!" "To the Reign of Jesus!" The latter motto appeared on the standard of the Prince of Taranto. The legate of the Pope followed next, accompanied by the clergy; then the troops of soldiers, on foot and on horseback; and finally the multitude of ragged men, women and children who trailed after the army. Fergan journeyed with these. To the end of husbanding their little purse, he employed himself taking charge of the mules or guiding the wagons, for which he received a few deniers and his food. The journey from Marhala to Jerusalem was trying in the extreme. A large number of helpless people dropped out on the route and died of thirst, hunger and fatigue, and became the pray of hyenas and vultures. Thus their bleaching bones, together with those of so many other victims, traced also the route to Jerusalem. Half a day's journey from the city Colombaik came near dying. Thrown down by a horse, his leg was broken in two places. As the child suffered excruciating pains he could not be transported on the ass. Leaving the other stragglers to continue their march, Fergan was left behind with Colombaik and Joan. The soil at that place was arid and mountainous. The pain suffered by Colombaik was intolerable. Hoping to descry some habitation, Fergan climbed to the top of a palm tree. At a great distance off the road nestled a collection of peasant houses at the foot of a hill, hidden under clusters of date trees. Aware of the kindheartedness natural to the Saracen people, whom nothing but the ferocity of the Crusaders pushed to a desperate resistance, above all aware of the religious regard that this nation has for the laws of hospitality, Fergan decided to transport his son with the aid of Joan to one of those houses and ask for help. The decision was put with all the greater promptness into execution out of fear for the marauders and vagabonds, who, hovering at a distance, would have slain them for the booty.
The dwellers of the little hamlet had all fled at the approach of the army of the Crusaders, except one Arab and his wife. Both of them, bent with age and seated at the threshold of their house, held their beads in their hands and were praying, in calm resignation awaiting death, certain that some soldier or other of Christ would come and pillage and ravage their home. The old Saracen and his mate, seeing Joan and Fergan approach carrying in their arms the child, who moaned piteously, realized that they need not fear them as enemies, and hastened forward to their encounter. Ignorant of the language of the travelers as these were of theirs, the Saracen couple exchanged a few words among themselves, pointing sympathetically to the child, and while the woman went towards a little garden, the man motioned to Fergan and Joan to follow him into the house. This dwelling was whitewashed without, after the fashion of the country; it was crowned by a terrace, and had no other opening than a narrow door. Two mats served for beds. After motioning Fergan and Joan to lay the child upon one of these and then to bare his leg, the host, who seemed gifted with certain surgical abilities, lengthily examined Colombaik's leg. He then stepped out, making a sign for Fergan and his wife to wait for him.
"Oh, Fergan!" exclaimed Joan, kneeling beside Colombaik, "with what solicitude did not that Saracen and his wife look upon our child! And yet we are strangers to them, enemies. The Crusaders whom we follow, ravage their country, massacre them, torture them to death! And yet see with what kindness these worthy people receive us!"
"It is natural. The Mohamedan priests, while preaching the sacred love of country and resistance to foreign oppression, also preach the holy laws of humanity towards God's creatures of whatever faith. Alack! Certain Christian priests order, and themselves set the example of, the extermination of those who do not share their beliefs. An atrocious creed!"
The Arab returned with his wife. She carried in her hand a vase of water, some palm leaves just pulled off, and some herbs that she had pounded between two stones. The Saracen brought several splints of the length of Colombaik's leg, together with a long bandage of cloth, with the aid of which she bound the splints firmly around the child's leg, after having covered it with the crushed herbs. The leg being bandaged, the old Arab woman sprinkled it with fresh water, and covered the whole limb with the palm leaves. Colombaik felt eased as if by enchantment. Full of gratitude, and unable to express themselves in a tongue that was not theirs, Fergan and Joan kissed the hands of their hosts. A tear rolled down upon the aged man's long beard, and he gravely pointed to heaven, meaning undoubtedly to tell his guests it was God that their thanks were due to. He then took the ass, which had remained standing at the door, and led it to the stable. The old woman brought in honey, fresh dates, sheep's milk and a buttered roll of meal. Fergan and Joan felt deeply touched by such a generous hospitality. Their child's sufferings were momentarily abating. The old man made them understand by a significant gesture, opening and closing his ten fingers three times and pointing to the child upon the mat, that he had to remain down thirty days, in order no doubt that the bones of his broken leg could again grow together and become strong. Thanks to the solitude where this house was ensconced in, the period necessary for the healing of the child ran peacefully by. They were the happiest days the serfs had yet known. After having exercised his hospitality towards them without knowing them, the aged Arabian grew attached to Fergan, Joan and Colombaik, touched by the gratitude that, to the best of their ability, they sought to manifest, and also by the tender affection that united Fergan and his wife. One day he took Fergan by the hand, led him up a stony hill, whence he pointed to the horizon, shaking his head expressive of uneasiness; he then pointed towards the foot of the hill at the tranquil habitation where they had dwelt nearly a month. Fergan understanding that he was urged to stay in that retreat, looked astonished at the Arabian. The latter thereupon folded his arms on his breast, closed his eyes, and, melancholily shaking his head, pointed to the earth, indicating that he was old, that soon he and his wife would die, and that, if Fergan was so inclined, the house, the garden, and the little field attached to it, would be his.
Fergan was but a poor serf, led to the Crusade by the urgency of escaping with wife and child the vengeance of his seigneur and the horrors of serfdom. Nevertheless, at that supreme moment, yielding obedience to the orders left by the Gallic chief Joel to his descendants, he achieved an act of self-sacrifice before which men more fortunately situated than himself might have recoiled. He might have accepted the aged Arabian's offer and ended his days free and happy in this retreat, in the company of his wife and child. But he was the depositary of a portion of the chronicles and relics of his family. He knew that Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, held the archives of their family back to the invasion of Gaul by Cæsar, while himself was charged with a latter portion of safe-keeping. Some day he hoped to be able, in obedience to the behest of Joel, to add to those chronicles the recital of his own and his family's ordeals during the terrible period of the feudal oppression, and, in his turn, narrate the events they witnessed during this Crusade, one of the momentous crimes of Rome. Accordingly, Fergan considered it a sacred duty to make every effort to return to Gaul, and join his relation Gildas the Tanner in Laon. Moreover, since his arrival in Syria, he had heard that the inhabitants of several large cities in Gaul, more enlightened and more daring than the poorer rustic plebs, were beginning to stir. He had heard accounts of the insurrection of several cities of Gaul against their seigneurs, bishops and abbots, masters of the places. Perchance, those bourgeois revolts might lead to revolts among the serfs of the field. He conceived as possible a general revolt against the hierarchy of Church, monarchy and seigneurs, and he considered it a crime not to strive to be in Gaul at that hour of uprising and general enfranchisement. Fergan declined the Arab's offer.
July 15, 1099, arrived. Forever indelibly fixed remained that fatal date upon the serf's mind. Towards noon, leaning upon his mother and Fergan, Colombaik had been essaying his strength. For the first time in thirty days he had risen from his bed, and the two venerable hosts followed with tender solicitude the movements of the child. Suddenly the tramp of a horse was heard descending at a gallop the hill that rose above the house. The aged Saracen exchanged a few words with his wife and both stepped out precipitately. A few instants later they re-entered, accompanied by another grey-bearded Musselman covered with dust. His pale and disconcerted features expressed terror and despair. He spoke to the aged couple in abrupt words and panting for breath. Blood-stained bandages of linen around his right arm and leg betokened two recent wounds. Several times, in the midst of his excited words, the word "Jerusalem" was heard—the only word that the serfs could understand. As he spoke, fear, indignation and horror reflected themselves on the features of the aged Saracen and his wife, until presently their venerable faces were bathed in tears, and they fell upon their knees, moaning and raising their hands to heaven. At that moment the stranger, who in his pre-occupation had not noticed the serfs, recognized them by their clothes as Christians, emitted a cry of rage and drew his cimeter. Quickly rising to their feet, both the hosts ran to him, and after a few words, pronounced in a voice of tender reproach, the Saracen warrior returned his sabre to its scabbard and exchanged a few sentences with the aged couple. The latter seemed to conjure the stranger to remain with them; but he shook his head, pressed their hands in his, rushed out, threw himself upon his steaming horse, invoked the vengeance of heaven with a gesture, climbed the hill at a gallop, and vanished from sight. This friend of the aged couple had come to inform them of the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. The recital of the massacres, the pillage, the unspeakable atrocities that the soldiers of Christ had soiled and dishonored their victims with, threw the aged couple into consternation. Anxious to ascertain the fact, Fergan addressed them, uttering the word "Jerusalem" in a sad and interrogating tone. Instead of answering, however, both drew brusquely away as if they extended to him the horror that the Crusaders inspired them with. Fergan exchanged a sad glance with Joan, when the host, no doubt regretting his first impulse, returned to the serfs, leaned over Colombaik, who had been laid down again, and kissed him on the forehead. Joan and Fergan, understanding the delicacy of the sentiment thus expressed, were moved to tears. The old Saracen took Fergan for one of the soldiers of that ferocious and impious Crusade, and deposited a kiss of pardon and oblivion upon the innocent brow of the child of the reputed malefactor. The aged Saracen then left the house with his wife.
"Jerusalem has fallen into the power of the Crusaders," Fergan said to Joan. "I can reach the city in a few hours. I desire to go there. There is nothing for me to fear. I shall be back early to-morrow morning. We shall then decide what to do."
Although uneasy at the prospect of his departure, the sweet Joan sought not to keep her husband back. After embracing her and entrusting to her his little treasury and the belt containing his family records and relics, Fergan left for Jerusalem. Hardly upon the road, which passed at quite a distance from his late retreat, he encountered a troop of pilgrims. They were also hastening to the holy city, whose domes, towers, minarets and even ramparts they began to perceive from afar after four hours march.
That vast city formed a square a league long. The enclosure dominated from the west by the high mount of Zion, contained the four rocky hills on which Jerusalem was built in an amphitheatre,—to the east, Mount Moriah, on which rose the Mosque of Omar, built upon the site of the old Temple of Solomon; to the southeast, Mount Acra, to the north, Mount Bezetha; and further to the west the Mount of Golgotha, the Calvary where the young man of Nazareth was crucified under the eyes of Fergan's ancestress Genevieve. At the summit of Calvary rose the Church of the Resurrection, built on the very spot where Jesus died, a magnificent church until then religiously respected by the Saracens, together with its treasures, despite the war of the Crusaders. Within the church stood the sepulchre of Christ, the pretext for this unhallowed war. Such was the distant view of Jerusalem. As the travellers approached, they saw more distinctly, within the ramparts of walls, the outlines of amphitheaters of white square houses, surmounted with terraces, and here and yonder, standing out against the deep blue of the sky, the domes of mosques, the steeples of Christian basilicas, and several bouquets of palm trees. Not a tree was visible in the environs of the city. The reddish, stony and parched ground, radiated the torrid heat of the sun that was westerning behind the hills. In the neighborhood of the camp, whose tents glistened only a short distance from the ramparts, a large number of Crusaders were seen dead or dying of the wounds that they received at the sortie made by the besieged. The wounded filled the air with pitiful wails, vainly imploring help. All the men, not the able-bodied alone, but even those whose wounds allowed them to walk, had precipitated themselves upon the city, in order to share in the sack. The abandoned camp contained only corpses, the dying, horses and beasts of burden. As the travelers drew still nearer to the city, whose gates had been knocked in after the siege, a confused and formidable noise struck their ears. It was a frightful mixture of cries of terror, of rage and of desperate supplication, above which ever and anon rose the fanatical clamor: "God wills it! God wills it!" After staggering and stumbling over thousands of corpses, strewn near the approaches of the gate of Bezetha, Fergan arrived at the entrance of a long street that issued into a vast square, in the middle of which rose the marvelous Mosque of Omar on the very site where once stood the ancient Temple of Solomon. It was as if the serf had stepped into a river of blood, red and reeking, and carrying in its current thousands of mutilated corpses, heads and disjointed members.
The street that Fergan stepped into belonged to the new ward, the richest of the city. Stately dwellings and not a few marble palaces, surmounted with balustraded terraces, rose on either side of this vast thoroughfare paved with wide slabs of stone. A furious multitude—soldiers, men, women and children, all belonging to the Crusade—swarmed over this long street, uttering ferocious yells. A young Saracen woman rushed out of the door of the third house to the right of Fergan. She was deadly pale with terror, her hair streamed behind her, and her rich clothes were in shreds. In her arms she carried two children, two or three years old. Behind her an aged man, already wounded, appeared on the threshold, walking backward and striving to defend her. The flow of blood covered his visage and clotted his long white beard, while he struggled to keep back two Crusaders. One of these, carrying on his left shoulder a bundle of costly clothes, pursued the aged Saracen with sword thrusts, and finally ran him through the breast, throwing him dead at the feet of the young mother. The second Crusader, who, no doubt disdaining to carry a heavy booty, had strung around his neck several gold chains pillaged in this house, immediately seized the young woman by the throat and rolled her over on a heap of corpses, while the first crushed under his iron-tagged heels the heads of the two children that had dropped from their mother's arms. At that instant, one of the women who followed the army hastened by, a hideous and savage-looking hag, brandishing in her hand the stump of a knife, red with blood. A lad, about the age of Colombaik, accompanied the fury. "Each one his turn," said she to the soldier; "leave for me those whelps of the devil, my son will dispatch them!" And placing the knife in the lad's hand, she added: "Cut off their heads, disembowel those infidel dogs!" The child obeyed the hag's orders and disemboweled the two little children.
Further away, a band of vagabonds and wenches, drunk with wine and carnage, was besieging a palace that the men of Heracle, seigneur of Polignac, had seized. As the symbol of possession, these had raised the embroidered banner of their seigneur upon the terrace of the splendid building. After throwing a shower of stones at the soldiers of the seigneur of Polignac, the vagabonds and wenches assailed the soldiers with sticks, pikes and cutlasses, shouting hoarsely in the midst of the bloody melée: "Death! To the sack! This house and its riches belong to us as well as to the seigneurs! To the sack! Death! Death!"
"Exterminate this band of vagabonds!" shouted back the soldiers, thrusting about them with their lances and swords. "Death to these jackals who mean to devour the prey of the lion!"
As Fergan advanced along this street he witnessed shocking scenes. The sight of a gigantic soldier carrying, strung on his upright lance, three little children from five to six months old, was a spectacle never to be forgotten. Suddenly he found himself shoved hither and thither, and presently shut in within a circle of armed men who seemed to be arranged in some kind of order before the entrance of one of the most splendid palaces on the street. Lemon and oleander trees, planted in boxes, but now broken in two and upset, still ornamented the moresque balustrades of the terrace. The band, among which there were several women, and that left a wide empty space free between itself and the walls, emitted yells of savage impatience. Presently, the sleeves of his brown frock rolled back to the elbows, and his hands red with blood, a monk leaned forward over the balustrade of the terrace. It was Peter the Hermit, the companion of Walter the Pennyless. The identical Cuckoo Peter, whose hollow eyes glistened with savage fanaticism, now called out to the crowd in a hoarse voice: "My brothers in Christ, are you ready? Draw near and receive your share of the booty."
"We are ready, holy man, and have been long waiting," answered several bandits; "we are losing our time here; they are pillaging elsewhere, holy father in God! We want our share of the booty."
"Here comes your share of this great feast, my brothers in Christ. The vapor of the infidels' blood rises towards the Lord like an incense of myrrh and balsam! Let not one of the miscreants, that we are about to throw down to you from this terrace, escape with his life!"
Peter the Hermit vanished and almost immediately the bust of a Saracen, clad in the purple caftan embroidered in gold, appeared above. Although bound hands and feet, the wild jumps of the unhappy man showed that he resisted with all his might the efforts of those who strove to throw him down into the street. A few minutes later, however, half his body had been forced over the balustrade. He straightened up once more, but immediately was hurled into space and dropped, head foremost, thirty feet below. A joyous clamor broke out at the man's fall, and redoubled when, with a dull thud, his skull struck the pavement and broke. He lived a few seconds longer, and strove to turn on his side while emitting violent imprecations. But soon, riddled with sword thrusts, broken with clubs and mauled with stones, there remained of him but a mangled lump in the midst of a pool of blood. "Father in God," cried out the mob, "the job is done! Hurry up! Send us another!"
The hideous figure of Peter the Hermit re-appeared above the balustrade. He leaned his head forward and contemplated the remains of the Saracen. "Well done, my children!" The monk had hardly disappeared again, when two youths of fifteen to sixteen years, brothers no doubt, and bound face to face, were thrown down from the terrace. The violence of the fall snapped the bands that held them together. The elder was killed on the spot, the younger's legs were broken. For a few moments he dragged himself on his hands, moaning piteously and seeking to approach his brother's corpse. The Crusaders pounced upon these new victims. Women, monsters in human form, pulled out their entrails, indulged in obscene and infamous mutilations upon the two corpses, and throwing into the air the bleeding parts, cried out exultingly: "Let's exterminate the infidels! God wills it!"
Twenty times did Peter the Hermit re-appear on the terrace, and twenty times were bodies thrown down over the balustrade, and torn to pieces by the crowd, drunk with bloodshed. Among these victims were five young girls and two other boys from ten to twelve years of age.
All the inhabitants of Jerusalem who were captured, even those who had paid ransom for their lives—men, women and children—all, to the number of seventy thousand human beings, were thus massacred. The extermination lasted two days and three nights, obedient to the following order of the seigneur Tancred, one of the heroes of the Crusade: "We consider it necessary to put to the sword without delay both the prisoners and those who paid ransom."
The last of the victims, cast at the mob by Peter the Hermit, were being massacred, when another band of Crusaders, running up from the other end of the street and marching towards the large square, passed by shouting: "The people of Tancred are pillaging the Mosque of Omar. * * * By all the saints of Paradise and all the devils of hell, we want our part of the booty!"
"And we stay here amusing ourselves with corpses!" cried out the butchers under Peter the Hermit's terrace. "Let's on to the mosque! To the sack! To the sack!"
Again Fergan was carried by the torrent of the crowd and arrived upon a spacious square littered with Saracen corpses, seeing that, after the assault had succeeded, the Saracens had retreated, fighting from street to street, and drawn themselves up before the mosque, where a last battle was delivered. At that place, these heroes were all killed defending the temple, the refuge of the women, the children and the old men, too feeble to fight, and who relied upon the pity and mercy of the vanquishers. Easier far had it been to excite the pity of a hungry tiger than that of the Crusaders.
Several tiers of marble stairs led down to the Mosque of Omar, whose floor was about three feet below the level of the street. Such had been the butchery indulged in by the Crusaders, and so much blood had run down into the temple, which measured more than one thousand feet in circumference, that the blood, rising above the first stairs, began to run over into the square. The interior of the Mosque of Omar offered to the eye but one vast sheet of blood, still warm, and the vapor of which rose like a light mist above an innumerable mass of corpses, here wholly, yonder only partially submerged in the red lake, where heads and members hacked from the trunk with hatchets, were seen floating at large. Of the Crusaders who entered the Mosque of Omar for pillage, some waded in blood to their waists. The warmth of the flowing blood and the site of the shocking butchery made Fergan reel with dizziness. His heart thumped against his ribs and his strength gave way. In vain he sought support against one of the porphyry columns at the facade of the mosque. He dropped down unconscious, his legs steeped in blood.
Fergan knew not how long he remained in that condition. When he regained consciousness it was night. The brightness of a large number of torches struck his eye. Religious songs, repeated in chorus by thousands of voices, fell upon his ears. Flanked by two files of soldiers, who marched in measured tread with torches in their hands, he saw a long procession pass by the temple. The procession wended its way to the Mount of Golgotha, close to the Church of the Resurrection, where stood the sepulchre of Jesus. At the head of the procession triumphantly marched the legate of the Pope, Peter the Hermit and the clergy, chanting praises to the All-powerful; after them the chiefs of the Crusaders, among them William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, clad in an old sack and smiting his breast. These were followed by the train-bands of the seigneurs, together with a multitude of soldiers, men, women, children and pilgrims, singing in chorus Laudate Creator. The crowd was so numerous that when the prelates and the chiefs of the Crusade, who headed the procession, reached the front of the Church of the Resurrection, the last ranks were still crowding upon each other in the middle of the square of the mosque. Other Crusaders marched outside of the two files of torch-bearing soldiers.
When Fergan approached the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, brilliantly lighted within, he heard loud roars of laughter mingled with maudlin imprecations. The King of the Vagabonds and his band, in company with their wenches, all drunk with wine and carnage, had taken possession of the holy place, and had begun to pillage it of its ornaments. At the center of the sanctuary stood Perrette the Ribald, her hair disheveled like a Bacchante's.