nt, a real
mother. On hearing that she was turned adrift by fire, seeking woefully
for a home, everyone grieved and wept; and that, not only in the country
about Chartres; in the Orleans country, in Normandy, Brittany, the Ile
de France, in the far north, whole populations stopped their regular
work, left their homes to fly to Her help, the rich giving money and
jewels, and helping the poor to drag their barrows and carry corn and
oil, wine, wood and lime, everything that could serve to feed labouring
men or help in building a church.

It was a constant stream of immigration, the spontaneous exodus of a
people. Every road was crowded with pilgrims, all, men and women alike,
dragging whole trees, pushing loads of sawn beams, and cartfuls of the
moaning sick and aged forming the sacred phalanx, the veterans of
suffering, the unconquerable legions of sorrow, all to help in the siege
of the heavenly Jerusalem, forming the outer guard to support the attack
by the reinforcement of prayer.

Nothing--neither sloughs, nor bogs, nor pathless forests, nor fordless
rivers, could check the advancing tide of the marching throng; and one
morning, from every point of the compass, lo! they took possession of
Chartres.

The investment began; while the sick opened the first parallels of
prayer, the sound pitched the tents; the camp extended for leagues on
all sides; tapers were kept burning on the carts, and at night La Beauce
was a champaign of stars.

What still seems incredible, and is nevertheless attested by every
chronicle of the time, is that this horde of old folks and children, of
women and men, were at once amenable to discipline; and yet they
belonged to every class of society, for there were among them knights
and ladies of high degree; but divine love was so powerful that it
annihilated distinctions and abolished caste; the nobles harnessed
themselves with the villeins to drag the trucks, piously fulfilling
their task as beasts of burthen; patrician dames helped the peasant
women to stir the mortar, and to cook the food; all lived together in an
undreamed surrender of prejudice; all were alike ready to be mere
labourers, machines, loins and arms, and to toil without a murmur under
the orders of the architects who had come out of the cloister to direct
the work.

Nothing was ever more simply or more efficiently organized; the convent
cellarers, forming a sort of commissariat for this army, superintended
the distribution