our own times, so that modern men seem to have undergone pain and
suffering greater than that of the Jews of old, who, in the company
of their wives and sons, and with full bellies, were led by angels
who made themselves visible to them.[32]

Partisan outbreaks like this fill the Gesta Dei per Francos, perhaps
more clearly distinguishing it from the earlier accounts of the First
Crusade than Guibert's more elaborate syntax, and self-conscious
diction.

His hatred of poor people also penetrates the text, often to bring
into higher relief the behavior of aristocrats. In Book Two, for
example, he offers a comic portrayal of poor, ignorant pilgrims:

There you would have seen remarkable, even comical things: poor men,
their cattle pulling two-wheeled carts, armed as though they were
horses, carrying their few possessions together with their small
children in the wagon. The small childrne, whenever they came upon a
castle or town on the way, asked whether this was the Jerusalem they
were seeking.

In the seventh and last book, Guibert tells the story of the woman
and the goose, again to ridicule the foolishness of the poor:

A poor woman set out on the journey, when a goose, filled with I do
not know what instructions, clearly exceeding the laws of her own
dull nature, followed her. Lo, rumor, flying on Pegasean wings,
filled the castles and cities with the news that even geese had been
sent by God to liberate Jerusalem. Not only did they deny that this
wretched woman was leading the goose, but they said that the goose