But the greatest delight for the eyes and the spirit began only when the hussars started forward. They moved on in calmness as was proper for regiments of such value; their lances pointing upward seemed a forest, and at the points, moved by the light breeze, was a rainbow cloud of streamers. Their horses were heavier than those in other squadrons; their steel armor was inlaid with gold; on their shoulders were wings, in which the feathers, even when moving slowly, made that sound heard in forests among branches. The great dignity, and, as it were, the pride which issued forth from them, made so deep an impression that the queen and court ladies, the senators, and above all, foreign visitors, rose in their carriages to see them more accurately. There was something tremendous in that march, for it came to the mind of each man unwittingly, that when an avalanche of iron like that should rush forward it would crush, grind, and drive apart all things in front of it, and that there was no human strength which could stop it. And this was undoubted. Not so distant at that time was the day when three thousand such horsemen had rubbed into dust Swedish legions five times their own number; still less remote was that other day when one squadron of the same kind had passed, like a spirit of destruction, through the whole army of Karl Gustav; and quite recent was the day when at Hotsim those same hussars under that same king there present had trampled in the earth Turkish guards formed of Janissaries, as easily as standing wheat in the open. Many of the men who had shared in that shattering of the enemy at Hotsim were serving then under the banners of that day, and these warriors, proud, calm, and confident, were starting now toward the walls of a foreign capital to reap a new harvest.