The court of France was at Vezelay--the King, the Queen, the great
vassals of the kingdom at the King's command, and those of Aquitaine
and Guienne and Poitou in the train of Eleanor, whose state outshone
and dwarfed her husband's. And there was Bernard, the holy man of
Clairvaux, to preach the Cross, where old men remembered the voice of
Peter the Hermit and the shout of men now long dead in far Palestine,
crying, "God's will! God's will!"

Because the church of Saint Mary Magdalen was too small to hold the
multitude, they were gathered together in a wide grassy hollow without
the little town, and there a raised floor of wood had been built for
the King and Queen and the great nobles; but the rest of the knights
and Eleanor's three hundred ladies stood upon the grass-grown slope,
and were crowded together by the vast concourse of the people.

The sun was already behind the hill, and the hot July air had cooled a
little; but it was still hot, and the breathing of the multitude could
be heard in the silence. Gilbert had come but just in time; he had left
his men to find him a lodging if they could, and now he pressed forward
as well as he might, to see and hear, but most of all to find out, if
he could, the face of Beatrix among the three hundred.

There sat the Queen, in scarlet and gold, wearing the crown upon her
russet hair, and the King in gold and blue beside her, square, grave,
and pale as ever; and when Gilbert had searched the three hundred fair
young faces in vain, his eyes came back to the most beautiful woman in
the world. He saw that she was fairer than even his memory of her, and
he felt pride that she should call herself his friend.