Now the whole feast ended with two pageants; but I confess that I know not by what name to call them, and so I shall describe them in such manner that thou mayest easily understand them. The one was, as it were, a race and the other a combat; and both were on horseback, the first without reins and only with staves and banners, that it seemed to be some military exercise; but in the second game arms were needed, and it was like unto a real battle. Both in the one and in the other we marvelled at the gifts of the Venetians, who are not only wonderful sailers of ships, but are also very skilled in all those exercises which belong to the art of war. For they showed such experience of riding and such deep knowledge of the handling of arms, and such endurance of fatigue, that one might set them up for examples to other warlike nations. The two games were held in that square of which I deem there is not the like in the world, that is over against the marble and gold front of the temple of Saint Mark. No stranger had a share in the first of the games, but four and twenty nobles, the goodliest and most richly clad, kept for themselves this part of the pageants.... It was a good sight to see so many young men, in clothes of purple and gold, curbing and spurring their well-shod steeds, all shiningly caparisoned, that seemed hardly to touch earth in their swift course. These young men obeyed the gesture of their chief with such precision that as the first reached the goal and left the field, a second took his place on the track, and then a third, and so on till the first began again, so well that they kept up the racing all day long, and that at evening one might have believed that there had been but one cavalier who rode; and while they ran thou wouldest have seen now the gilded tips of their staves flying through the air, and now thou couldest have heard their red flags stiffening in the breeze with a sound as of wings.