Jerusalem was most precious of all, by reason both of its sacred associations and of the difficulty of the journey. No Charlemagne was needed to justify resort to the Holy Sepulchre, where the mother of the great emperor Constantine had built the first shrine; but the great Charles had a hostel constructed there for Frankish pilgrims, and soon legend makes him, too, follow the road to Constantinople and Jerusalem, as we are reminded in the great Charlemagne window at Chartres. There were manuals for the pilgrim to Jerusalem also, but these were chiefly occupied with how to reach the heavenly city, though one of them contents itself with advising the traveller to keep his face always to the east and ask God’s help. In all this life of the road the Normans took their full share. Michelet would have it that their motive was the Norman spirit of gain, no longer able to plunder neighbors at home, but glad of the chance of making something on the way and the certainty of gaining a hundred per cent by assuring the soul’s salvation at the journey’s end. Certainly they were not afraid to travel nor averse to taking advantage of the opportunities which travel might bring. We find them, sometimes singly and sometimes in armed bands, on the road to Spain, to Rome, and to the Holy City. At one time it may be the duke himself, Robert the Magnificent, who wends his way with a goodly company to the Holy Sepulchre, only to die at Nicæa on his return; or a holy abbot, like Thierry of Saint-Évroul, denied the sight of the earthly Jerusalem which he sought, but turning his thoughts to the city not made with hands as he composed himself for his last sleep before a lonely altar on the shores of Cyprus. In other cases we find the military element preponderating, as with Roger of Toeni, who led an army against the Saracens of Spain in the time of Duke Richard the Good, or Robert Crispin half a century later, fighting in Spain, sojourning in Italy, and finally passing into the service of the emperor at Constantinople, where he had “much triumph and much victory.” In this stirring world the line between pilgrim and adventurer was not easy to draw, and the Normans did not always draw it. Often “their penitent’s garb covered a coat of mail,” and they carried a great sword along with their pilgrim’s staff and wallet.[61] We must remember that Normandy exported in this period a considerable supply of younger sons, bred to a life of warfare and fed upon the rich nourishment of the _chansons de gestes_, but turned loose upon the world to seek elsewhere the lands and booty and deeds of renown which they could no longer expect to find at home. The conquest of England gave an outlet to this movement in one direction; the conquest of southern Italy absorbed it in another. * * * * *