One day, as he was secretly praying in front of the Holy Sepulchre, he heard a voice saying, “Peter, arise! go forth and announce the tribulation of my people; it is time that my servants be succoured and my holy places delivered.” Under the influence of this heavenly command, the poor pilgrim, convinced that he was henceforward chosen by the divine will, determined to allow himself no rest till the holy mission, with which Christ himself had entrusted him, had been fully and faithfully accomplished. He left Palestine with letters from the patriarch Simeon to the Pope; he crossed the sea, hurried to Rome, and threw himself at the feet of Urban II., who, listening to the pathetic and eloquent language of the poor pilgrim, fancied that he was addressed by some inspired prophet, and entrusted him with the mission of summoning the nations to the holy war (Fig. 100). Peter the Hermit, says the historian whose account we are following, left Italy, crossed the Alps, and wandered over France and a great part of Europe, infusing into all the burning zeal with which he was filled. He journeyed on a mule, a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girdled with a thick cord, and clad in a long frock and mantle of the commonest, coarsest stuff. His peculiar garments excited the curiosity of the people, while the austerity of his life, his charity, and the morality he inculcated, made them reverence him as a saint. He wandered in this guise from town to town, from province to province, stirring up the courage of some and the piety of others; sometimes he addressed them from church pulpits, sometimes in the highways and public places. His eloquence was keen and vigorous, full of vehement appeals that carried away the multitudes who listened to him. He recalled to their memories the profanation of the holy places, and the Christian blood that had poured in rivers down the streets of Jerusalem; he called on Heaven, the saints, and the angels, whose testimony he invoked as to the truth of his statements; he appealed to them by the holy hill of Sion, by the heights of Calvary, and by the mount of Olives, whose slopes he declared were ringing with groans and lamentations. When words failed him to further depict the miseries of the faithful in the far East, he showed them the crucifix which he always carried about him, and, beating his breast, burst into passionate tears. [Illustration: Fig. 100.--Peter the Hermit delivering the Message of Simeon, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to Pope Urban II.--From a Coloured Drawing by Germain Picavet in the “Histoire des Croisades,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]