difficulty or not at all. They are the ones who, while still
laboring under the pagan error, when they triumphed on the
battlefield over the Gauls, who were Christians, did not punish or
kill any of them, because they believed in Christ. Instead, those
whom Roman severity had punished with sword and fire, French native
generosity covered with gems and amber. They strove to welcome with
honor not only those who lived within their own borders, but they
also affectionately cared for people who came from Spain, Italy, or
anywhere else, so that love for the martyrs and confessors, whom they
constantly served and honored, made them famous, finally driving them
to the glorious victory at Jerusalem. Because it has carried the
yoke since the days of its youth, it will sit in isolation,[34] a
nation noble, wise, war-like, generous, brilliant above all kinds of
nations. Every nation borrows the name as an honorific title; do we
not see the Bretons, the English, the Ligurians call men "Frank" if
they behave well? But now let us return to the subject.

"Let us return to the subject," like the earlier injunction, "let us
continue in the direction in which we set out," indicates Guibert's
awareness of his tendency to perform "sorties."[35] At times he
turns from the narrative to deliver a sermon, or to offer a biography
of Mahomet, and, more than once, to lecture on ecclesiastical history.
The apparent looseness of structure which results, a quality Misch
attributed to the Memoirs as well, may be symptom of Guibert's
Shandy-like temperament, or may be evidence that the remarks he made
about his style in an early aside to the reader apply equally well to
his structure:

Please, my reader, knowing without a doubt that I certainly had no
more time for writing than those moments during which I dictated the