Fulke sighed. "Ah, lucky youth! That precious sight upon which mine eyes may never dwell!" "Surely, you go with the host, Messer Fulke?" asked Hugh kindly. The priest shook his head. "I go upon my Father's business," he said. "My path lies otherwhere. God keep you, fair sirs." Before they could question him further, his quick, nervous stride had carried him into the midst of the crowd at the inn gateway, whose ranks closed around him in a tempest of adulation. "In sooth, this Fulke is a great priest," said Hugh, as they rode slowly after him to join the column of Crusaders. "And a sick man," added Matteo thoughtfully. "Sick?" "Yes, his days are numbered, or I have never seen the sickness of the lungs. Also, Hugh, he knoweth it." Matteo spoke no more than the truth. Messer Fulke was too ill to journey on with the host that day. He tarried for a while at Troyes, rallying his strength, and then rode forth to castigate certain dilatory persons who had taken the Cross, and in the heat of his labour perished as he had foreseen, unable to witness the fruit of his own mighty efforts. The knights and leaders of the host were not sorry to miss Fulke. They had a strong contingent of churchmen for the necessary masses and other holy services, jolly, live-at-your-ease clerks, who kept sermons for sermon time; and the hard-fighting men-at-arms preferred the counsels of such to the relentless, austere piety of the priest of Neuilly, who was swift to seize every opportunity for admonition and who spared none from prince to varlet. The host was like a snowball that starts an avalanche. Every league that the column traversed brought some addition to it. Perhaps it was the following of a petty baron; perhaps a single adventurer, armoured knight or leather-coated burgher; perhaps the imposing array of a province or town. From day to day the numbers grew, and long before they had traversed Burgundy and reached the pass over Mont Cenis they had attained the proportions of an army. Geoffrey the Marshal made much of Hugh and Matteo, and they rode with the great lords and barons. Knights famous throughout Europe companioned them--Manasses de l'Lisle, Macaire de Sainte-Menehould, Miles le Brabant, Reginald de Dampierre, Geoffrey de Joinville, Payen d'Orleans, Peter de Bracieux, Matthew de Montmorency, Conon de Béthune, James d'Avesnes, Anseau de Cayeaux and many more, noted for skill in tourney and the field. Villehardouin had not boasted when he claimed that the best men-at-arms of Western Europe were joining the host.