cannot easily be moved. Stay your steps and recollect your old
hermitage, your earlier fasting. You should have joined your bones
to your skin,[160] you should have stretched your stomach with the
least roots, fed it with the grass eaten by cattle. Why do you
remember immoderate eating? That is not the monastic rule, nor what
you learned from the woman who gave you birth; or let your own
teachings drive you. Even as you compelled people to go on this
journey, and have made them into paupers, so you should go before
them, carrying out the commandments that you have taught them. Once
he abstained from grain, eating only fish and wine. For a monk, more
pious food would be leeks, cress, turnips, cardamum, nuts, filberts,
barley, lentils, and herbs, without fish or wine, but with crumbs of
bread.[161]

And so the refugees from the pious siege and from the holy suffering
were pursued by Tancred, a man steady in the pursuit of Christ's
business, who followed and caught them; and, as was right, heaping
abuse on them, he brought them back. He placed no faith in their
promises to return until each had sworn on his faith to return to the
sacred army and to submit to whatever judgment the leaders might make
about their desertion. Therefore William, willing or unwilling, was
compelled to return, and he was brought to the court of the
magnificent Bohemund, outside of which he remained awake all night.
The next day, at dawn's early light, he was led into the presence of
this fine prince. To Peter, covered with the shame he had earned for
himself, the leader said, "Although the name of the Frankish race,
stands forth with regal majesty everywhere, and although France, the
mother of virtue and resolve in accordance with God's will has sent
forth men who until now have been the most morally unblemished, she
bore you, you, useless babbler and most impure of all men, to her own