The heralds soon sound a joyous blast, which is answered by the musicians in the orchestras. The lists are open, and the different games intended to show the skill and strength of the competitors begin. Six knights, followed by their pages and squires, appear. They begin with the _pas de lance_ (tilting at the ring); the horses are put to the gallop, and each knight, rapidly borne along, removes at the point of his lance one of the rings suspended before the imperial stand. Each quadrille repeats the same movement three times, until the rings have mostly disappeared, and the dexterity of the competitors has been put to a severe test. At the end of this first exercise the lances with the rings carried by each upon them are handed to the squires, and the second game begins. Each champion, armed with a short dart, flings it with consummate skill at the Saracens’ heads, and without slackening his pace picks from the ground, by means of a second curved javelin, the dart he has just flung. After that, drawing their swords, and bent on the necks of their cattle, the knights gallop towards their motionless adversaries, and strike them, endeavouring, however, to cut them down altogether. Half-a-dozen different games followed, and the whole was wound up by a cleverly simulated combat between the knights--so cleverly simulated that the Prince de Lichtenstein bit the dust, and was carried away unconscious. It was an accident which, but for the cries from the ladies’ stand, would have passed unnoticed, for though the knights endeavoured, as in the jousts of old, to dismount their rivals, certain regulations strictly limiting the bounds of attack and defence had been fixed, and the moment there was the faintest sign of their being exceeded by this or that combatant, the heralds-of-arms interfered, suspended the offender, and a new knight took his place.