At every gate, at every buttressed window, stand a couple of pages in crimson dolmans and tightly-fitting, cornflower-blue hose, richly garnished with silver-embroidered lace. At the window of the highest donjon sits the castellan, ready to proclaim the arrival of his liege lord by the blast of a horn. Over his head the wind is wrestling with a gigantic purple banner, the huge dependent gold tassels of which it can only raise with difficulty. Out of all the windows, inquisitive domestics and expectant knights and dames peep forth, or rather, out of all the windows but three, which are altogether bare of festal groups, for there nothing is to be seen but fragrant jasmines and quivering mimosas in snow-white porcelain vases, behind which one can dimly distinguish a pale and delicate form leaning dreamily on the embroidered window-cushions. This is Denis Banfi's wife. It might have been ten o'clock in the morning when the castellan, perceiving clouds of dust on the highway, announced the approach of his Excellency with a blast of his horn, whereupon the roar of the mortars scared every one into his proper place; the priests and teachers reviewed their pupils, the officers marshalled their troops, and the trumpeters on the ramparts played the latest marches. Shortly afterwards the Lord-Lieutenant arrived, escorted by the banderia of half-a-dozen counties. Before and behind him trotted squadrons of horsemen, whose arms and caparisons gleamed with all the colours of the rainbow. There were to be seen horses of every race and every hue--Arabian stallions, Transylvanian full-bloods, little Wallachian ponies, slim English racers, and light-footed Barbary steeds. There were horses with flesh-coloured manes, jewelled bits, variegated reins, and embroidered schabracks. There were all the weapons with which the art of war was then familiar--the slender Damascus blade, the toothed morning-star, the curved _csakany_,[37] the serpentine crease, and those long, gorgeously-fashioned fire-arms which could seldom be discharged more than once; here and there, too, was visible a specimen of those three-edged, six feet long Turkish scimitars, which were just then coming into vogue. [Footnote 37: _Csakany._ An ancient weapon, half hook, half battle-axe, of Tartar origin.]