Elise has been vegetating in this hut for now twenty years--living in filth and darkness, but talking most piously to visitors standing outside. Seemingly, she does little except to mutter almost incessant prayers. Already her crime is forgotten. The peasants speak of her as "that holy woman" and even wonder whether, after she dies in her cell--for she will never leave it--she cannot be enrolled among the saints. There are many other much more innocent recluses, male and female, who have been walled up voluntarily--either out of piety or of sheer love of idleness, possibly because of both. [Sidenote: Recluses and Pilgrims] Nevertheless, ordinarily the best way to discharge the load of a guilty conscience is by pilgrimage. Confessors often impose this means of penance upon penitents, as the best way of winning the divine mercy. Since death is about the only judicial penalty for great crimes, a penance of pilgrimage for six, ten, or twelve years--going from shrine to shrine all over Christendom--is really a substitute for a term of imprisonment. Pilgrims of this pronounced type are required to go barefoot, with head shaved, to quit their families and wives, and to fast continually--that is, never to touch meat more than once a day. Even exalted nobles thus spend the remainder of a lifetime expiating their iniquities. Everyone has heard of Count Fulk the Black of Anjou, who heaped up misdeeds even to the murdering of his wife. Then at last he realized the awful peril to his soul. Three times he made the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the third time letting himself be dragged upon a hurdle through the streets of the Sacred City, while two varlets smote him with whips. Such great criminals often carry passports issued by bishops, certifying that they are expiating by pilgrimage specified evil deeds--and requesting Christian folk to give them lodging, food, and assistance. These penitents, if knights, are likely to wear chains upon their wrists and neck, forged of their own armor, as witnesses at once of their social position and their genuine repentance. Most pilgrims, however, have no such fearful things weighing down their souls. They are simply ordinary erring men who are moved by a genuine piety, possibly admixed with a willingness to find excuse for "seeing the world." Every day they appear at the gate of St. Aliquis castle to ask a share in the supper and a bed on the rushes in the hall, and they are respectfully treated, although Conon sometimes complains that their trailing robes of brown wool, heavy staffs, and sacks slung at belt are merely the disguises for so many wandering rogues. Unwashed and unkempt though many of them are, it never does to repulse them, lest you lose the Scriptural blessing for those who received strangers and so "have entertained angels unawares."