ht of opinion favors his descent from humble parents.

All are agreed that he was of very ordinary appearance; one says
"ignoble and vulgar." The sum of the statements of contemporaries as to
his personality, is that he was of sharp understanding, energetic,
decided; coarse and sometimes brutal; enthusiastic; of great imaginative
power. If a Picard, then a Frank, and if a Frank, then a fighter, and
very ready to fight for religion. His nationality, therefore, gave him
access by speech to a most restless, gallant, and adventurous people.
Born with courage, moral intensity, restlessness, and activity, he
experimented for satisfaction in every direction.

[Sidenote: _Chooses Hermit's Life_]

[Sidenote: _Effect of Self-confidence_]

It seems that neither celibacy nor marriage, study nor warfare, long
attracted him. The conditions about him seemed beyond his remedy, and,
like many others, he retired from a sinful world to the harshnesses and
austerity of a hermit's life. Fasting did for him what it seems to do
for all when excess is reached either by self-will or necessity. He
became truly a "visionary." "He saw visions and dreamed dreams." His
temperament and his religious exercises made him feel that, better than
others he knew the will of God and that he was chosen to execute it. In
this stage a man becomes capable of great things in a poor cause. The
world is always impressed by the confident and the courageous. No great
movement, however wrong in doctrine, defective in morals, or disastrous
in results, has been without such leadership.

Like all orators of the Latin race, his fervor showed itself, not only
in his tones, but in his gesticulation and his postures. He was a master
of pantomime. If any were beyond his voice, they were not beyond his
meaning. If he had lived in our time he would have been counted among
the most "magnetic" of preachers. The reputation of his sanctity
showered him with gifts. He kept nothing for himself. All went to the
poor, and evil women were dowried by him that they might cease from evil
in honorable marriage.

[Sidenote: _Generosity Self-Sacrifice_]

Peter was not stirred alone by the relations of returning pilgrims as to
the ignominies heaped alike on the sacred places and on the religious by
the Turks. He followed in the wake of the devotees who traversed the
long road to the Holy City. That Peter actually made this journey is
sufficiently attested by his contemporary, Anna Conme