and Rodamont maintained the bridge of Montpellier, for the sake of the lady of his love, it is yet all plain matter of fact, spread out in becoming style, by an eyewitness, with a full account of the ceremonies, both of chivalry and of religion, that accompanied it. The theory of the whole is, that Quiñones, in acknowledgment of being prisoner to a noble lady, had, for some time, weekly worn her chains; and that he was now to ransom himself from this _fanciful_ imprisonment by the payment of a certain number of _real_ spears broken by him and his friends in fair fight. All this, to be sure, is fantastic enough. But the ideas of love, honor, and religion displayed in the proceedings of the champions,[296] who hear mass devoutly every day, and yet cannot obtain Christian burial for the Aragonese knight who is killed, and in the conduct of Quiñones himself, who fasts each Thursday, partly, it should seem, in honor of the Madonna, and partly in honor of his lady,--these and other whimsical incongruities are still more fantastic. They seem, indeed, as we read their record, to be quite worthy of the admiration expressed for them by Don Quixote in his argument with the wise canon,[297] but hardly worthy of any other; so that we are surprised, at first, when we find them specially recorded in the contemporary Chronicle of King John, and filling, long afterwards, a separate chapter in the graver Annals of Zurita. And yet such a grand tournament was an important event in the age when it happened, and is highly illustrative of the contemporary manners.[298] History and chronicle, therefore, alike did well to give it a place; and, indeed, down to the present time, the curious and elaborate record of the details and ceremonies of the Passo Honroso is of no little value as one of the best exhibitions that remain to us of the genius of chivalry, and as quite the best exhibition of what has been considered the most characteristic of all the knightly institutions. [296] See Sections 23 and 64; and for a curious vow made by one of the wounded knights, that he would never again make love to nuns as he had done, see Sect. 25. [297] Don Quixote makes precisely such a use of the Passo Honroso as might be expected from the perverse acuteness so often shown by madmen,--one of the many instances in which we see Cervantes’s nice observation of the workings of human nature. Parte I. c. 49. [298] Take the years immediately about 1434, in which the Passo Honroso occurred, and we find four or five instances. (Crónica de Juan el IIº, 1433, Cap. 2; 1434, Cap. 4; 1435, Capp. 3 and 8; 1436, Cap. 4.) Indeed, the Chronicle is full of them; and in several, the Great Constable Alvaro de Luna figures.