Meantime the happy new cavaliers hold their horses motionless for an instant while their squires run to them with their lances and triangular shields. The lances have long bright pennons with three tails which float down upon their riders' helmets. This act performed, the riders put their steeds through all manner of gallops and caracoles, and next, "singing high with clear voice," away they go, flying toward a place on the exercise ground where the _quintain_--the wooden manikin warrior--has been set up.[64] To smash its shield and fling it to the ground with a single lance thrust is another unescapable test. This ordeal also is met by Aimery and his peers with tolerable glory for all. After this sport the new knights are expected to _behourder_--that is, to indulge in mock duels with blunted weapons. These were not counted serious contests, but often enough, if blood is high and rivalry keen, they can take on the form of vigorous combats. To-day, however, everybody is in too good humor for violent blows; besides, the real tournament begins to-morrow, and it is best to keep strength and weapons until then. The morning is now spent. Seigneurial appetites have been nobly whetted. The pavilions are again ready in the garden, and the cooks have prepared pasties, joints of meat, and great quantities of roast poultry, even as for the wedding feast. There is another round of gorging and guzzling, only this time the six new knights occupy the place of honor, and the master jongleur's story is not concerning sad Tristan, but about how brave Godfrey of Bouillon stormed Jerusalem. Everybody is commenting upon the admirable grace, modesty, and proficiency in arms of Sire Aimery. A count has approached Conon already before dinner. "Fair Baron, you have a brother who is a credit to your name. Is it true he is to receive Petitmur? I have a daughter in her fifteenth year; her dowry will be----" But Conon tactfully shrugs his shoulders. "Fair Count, my brother will indeed receive Petitmur; but to-day he is knighted and can speak for himself. Make your marriage proposals to him. I have no longer the right to control him." FOOTNOTES: [60] Lances grew longer and stouter in the later Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century they were about fifteen feet long and were a kind of battering rams designed to dash one's opponent out of the saddle, even if his armor were not pierced. [61] Another weapon not infrequently used was the mace, an iron-headed war club with a fairly long handle. In powerful hands such a weapon could fell the sturdiest opponent, however good his armor. The mace was somewhat the favorite of martial bishops, abbots, and other churchmen, who thus evaded the letter of the canon forbidding clerics to "smite with the edge of the sword," or to "shed blood." The mace merely smote your foe senseless or dashed out his brains, without piercing his lungs or breast! Another weapon especially common in the early Middle Ages was the battle ax.