l pope, and there were
sovereigns who were his enemies. What a God-given opportunity to humble
the Antipope and bring the unfriendly kings to his feet!

[Sidenote: _Peter's Garb_]

The pope gave Peter his commission and sent him forth with his blessing.
Mounting a mule, which soon attained in the thought of the people
something of its master's sanctity, he passed through Italy, crossed the
Alps, was in every part of France, and stirred the larger part of
Europe. With a crucifix in his hand, his body girdled with a rope,
clothed in a long cassock of the coarsest stuff, and a hermit's hood, he
could not have had, from the standpoint of public attention, a better
appearance. He kept himself free from monkish evils in habits and
conduct, and as he preached the loftiest morality by word as by life,
the people honored holiness in him.

[Sidenote: _Ready to Preach Anywhere_]

Like all who have been great reformers, he was indifferent as to where
he preached so that he could get a hearing. When the pulpits were open
and could reach the multitude, he was glad to preach in the sacred
inclosures; when his mission could reach more minds on the high roads
and public squares, he as gladly preached there. He knew how to use
apostrophes and personifications, and made the holy places themselves
clamor for help. He sometimes showed a letter which he said had fallen
from heaven wherein God called upon all Christendom to drive the
heathens out of Jerusalem and possess it forever. His favorite prophecy
was "Jerusalem shall be destroyed till the time of the heathen shall be
fulfilled." The agonies endured by the Christians of Palestine he
described with such accuracy of language and appropriateness of gesture,
that his hearers seemed to see them writhe under the lash and to hear
them groan in their wounds.

[Sidenote: _Waving his Crucifix_]

When he had exhausted his vocabulary and was exhausted by his emotions,
he would wave the image of Christ suffering on the cross before his
sobbing and wailing hearers.

The news of such preaching and of such scenes travels fast and far.
Wherever the Hermit went he was received as a saint, and if the people
could not obtain a thread of his garment they contented themselves with
a hair from the tail of his mule!

[Sidenote: _Effect of His Preaching_]

Whatever the modern mind may see of credulity among the people or of
fanaticism in Peter, contemporary annals show that his preaching was
follow