Singing, dancing, uproarious with gladness, the troop crossed the village and passed by the hut of Fergan. The serfs, instead of betaking themselves to the fields for their hard day's labor, ran ahead of the train, shut in at that moment between two lines of ruined houses that bordered the road. Joan, standing at the threshold of her door, looked at this mob as it passed, with a mixture of astonishment and fear. A big scamp of a gallows bird, nicknamed by his companions Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, was giving his arm to a young wench that went by the name of Perrette the Ribald. She noticed poor Joan the Hunchback at her door and cried out to her, alluding to her deformity: "Halloa, you there, who carry your baggage on your back, come with us to Jerusalem; you will be admired there as one of the prodigies among the other marvels!"
"By the navel of the Pope! By the buttocks of Satan! You are right, my ribald!" cried the Gibbet-cheater. "There can be no hunchbacks in Jerusalem, a land of beautiful Saracen women, according to our friend Walter the Pennyless. We shall exhibit this hunchback for money. Come on!" said the bandit, seizing Joan by the arm, "follow us, you camel!"
"Yes, yes," added Perrette the Ribald, laughing loudly and seizing the other arm of the quarryman's wife, "come to Jerusalem; come to the land of marvels!"
"Leave me alone!" said the poor woman, struggling to disengage herself. "For pity's sake, leave me! I am expecting my husband and my child!"
Forced to follow her persecutors, and carried, despite herself, by the stream of the Crusaders, Joan, fearing to be stifled or crushed under foot by the crowd, sought no longer to struggle against the current. Suddenly, instead of proceeding onward, the mob swayed back, and these words ran from mouth to mouth: "Silence! Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless are going to speak! Silence!" A deep silence ensued. Halting in the middle of a large open space, where, gaping with curiosity, the serfs of the village stood gathered together, the monk and his companion prepared themselves to harangue these poor rustic plebs. Cuckoo Peter reined in his white mule and rising in his stirrups, he screamed in a hoarse yet penetrating voice, addressing the serfs of the seigniory of Plouernel: "Do you, Christian folks, know what is going on in Palestine? The divine tomb of the Saviour is in the hands of the Saracens! The Holy Sepulchre of our Lord is in the power of the infidels! Woe is us! Woe! Malediction! Malediction!" And the monk struck his chest, tore his frock, rolled his hollow eyes in their sockets, ground his teeth, foamed at the mouth, went through a thousand contortions on his mule, and resumed with increased fury: "The infidel is lord in Jerusalem, the Holy City! The miscreant insults the tomb of Christ with his presence! And you, Christians, my brothers, you remain indifferent before so horrible a sacrilege! Before such an abomination----"