  The Bethe--Salpeter equation for pion fluctuations off the chiral soliton in
the Nambu--Jona--Lasinio model is constructed. By Goldstone's theorem this
equation has rotational and translational zero modes because the classical
soliton is a localized stationary field configuration which violates rotational
and translational invariance. Furthermore, the proper normalization of the
fluctuating eigen--modes is obtained. Second quantization of the pion
fluctuations off the chiral soliton provides an energy functional of the pion
fluctuations which formally coincides with that of a harmonic oscillator. The
corresponding quantum corrections to the soliton mass together with the
semi--classical cranking prescription yield reasonable predictions for the
masses of the nucleon and the $\Delta$--resonance when the constituent quark
mass is chosen to be about 400MeV. These calculations are, to some extend,
hampered by the non--confining character of the Nambu--Jona--Lasinio model.
Comments on the $1/N_C$ counting scheme are added.
