After a scene like this there is no reinstatement for the sinner save by some great act of penance and mortification. An excommunicated person is next door to an outlaw. He may find sundry companions in crime, but most people will shun him as they would a leper. This particular baron, after vain boasts and defiance, at last was so conscience-torn and forsaken that he made an abject peace with the bishop. First, he gave ruinously costly gifts to the cathedral; then he presented himself barefoot and in the robe of a pilgrim at the chancel. He prostrated himself and for a day and a night remained in prayer before the high altar, eating and drinking nothing. After that he knelt again while some three-score clerics and monks present each smote him with a rod, he crying aloud, "Just are Thy judgments, O Lord!" after every blow. Not till all this was accomplished did the bishop raise him, pronounce the absolution, and give him the kiss of peace. It was very dreadful.[85] For lesser offenses against the Church there are lesser but effective penalties. In Pontdebois there was once a religious procession in Lent. A certain woman marched therein with pretended devoutness, but then went home and in defiance of the fast-time dined upon some mutton and ham. The odor escaped into the street. The woman was seized, and the bishop condemned her to walk through the town with her quarter of mutton on the spit over her shoulder, the ham slung round her neck, and with a ribald crowd, of course, trailing behind. After that penance the fasts were well kept in Pontdebois. [Sidenote: Festive Side of Popular Religion] Yet one must not think of the religion of this Feudal Age as in general sad. On the contrary (by one of those abrupt contrasts now grown familiar) clergy and people get vast joy, not to say amusement, even out of the sacred ordinances. "Men go gayly along the road to salvation." For example, the great pilgrimages (pardons) are often festive reunions with merchants chaffering and jongleurs playing or doing their tricks while the whole company proceeds to some shrine. Even in the church building solemnity is not always maintained. The choir, indeed, belongs pretty strictly to worship, but in the nave all sorts of secular proceedings can go on, even the meetings of malcontent factions and of rioters. The church bells ring for markets, for musters, or for peaceful gatherings almost as often as they ring for the holy services. As for the sacred festivals, good bishops complain that they are so numerous that the secular element intrudes utterly, and disfigures them with idleness and carousing. The peasants may go to early mass; after that they will drink, chatter, sing, dance (in a very riotous fashion), and join in wrestlings, races, and archery contests until nightfall.