“This white girdle which I place around your loins is to teach you to keep your body pure and to avoid luxury. These two golden spurs are to urge on your horse; imitate its ardour and its docility, and as it obeys you, so be you obedient to the Lord. Now I fasten your sword to your side; strike your enemies with its double edge, prevent the poor from being crushed by the rich, the weak from being oppressed by the strong. I put upon your head a pure white _coif_ to indicate that your soul similarly should be stainless.” Every pursuivant was perfectly well acquainted with the meaning of the ordination of knighthood. The vigil of arms, the strict fasts, the three nights spent in prayer in a lonely chapel, the white garments of the neophyte, the consecration of his sword in front of the altar, were sufficient to prove to the novice the gravity of the engagement he was contracting under the auspices of religion. At last a day was fixed for the great ceremony, and the neophyte--after hearing mass on his bended knees, and with his sword, which he had not yet acquired the right to gird to his side, suspended from his neck--received from the hands of some noble or of some noble lady his spurs, his helmet, his cuirass, his gauntlets, and his sword. The ceremony was completed by the _colée_; that is to say, the investing knight, before presenting him with the sword, struck him across the shoulder with its flat side, and then gave him the _accolade_ as a sign of brotherly adoption. His shield, his lance, and his charger, were then brought to the new-made knight, and he was thenceforward at liberty to commence the career of glory, of devotion, and of combat, to which for so many years he had aspired. [Illustration: Fig. 124.--Degradation of a Knight.--Fragment of a Woodcut attributed to Jost Amman, bearing the date 1565 and the monogram A. J. (Collection of M. Guénebault of Paris).] The Christian symbolism, which had accompanied the first steps of the novice, followed and surrounded him in some way or other during the whole of his knightly career. Indeed, it took part in his punishment and degradation if he broke his plighted faith or if he forfeited his honour. Exposed on a scaffold in nothing but his shirt, he was stripped of his armour, which was broken to pieces before his eyes and thrown at his feet, while his spurs were thrown upon a dunghill. His shield was fastened to the croup of a cart-horse and dragged through the dust, and his charger’s tail was cut off. A herald-at-arms asked thrice, “Who is there?” Three times an answer was given naming the knight about to be degraded, and three times the herald rejoined, “No, it is not so; I see no knight here, I see only a coward who has been false to his plighted faith.” Carried thence to the church on a litter like a dead body, the culprit was forced to listen while the burial service was read over him, for he had lost his honour, and was now only looked upon as a corpse (Fig. 124).