The rushing forward, to all appearances heated, crowd drew nearer. And the crowd of knights stood firm seeming for once to have knit together. Lads of iron held their lances out in front of them so that you could have driven a coach and four over the resulting bridge so densely packed were the knights and so unsurprisingly lance after lance stuck out, immobile, unmovable, just the thing one might have thought for one of the pushing, pressing, human chests opposite to be spitted by. Here a stupid wall of sharp points, there men in shirts, only half dressed. Here the art of war practised in the most narrow-minded of ways, there men in the grip of inarticulate anger. One after another they ran forward boldly just to put an end to this despicable lack of enthusiasm and threw themselves onto the tip of a lance, crazy, mad, driven by rage and fury. They ended up, of course, falling over one another on the ground without having been able even to inflict a wound with their hand-held weapons on the plumed and helmeted louts of iron opposite. They fell face down into the dusty horse dung left behind on the ground by noble mounts. And so it befell nearly all these men in a state of undress while the lances, already reddened by their blood, seemed to smile at them disdainfully. * * * No. That was nothing. One saw oneself compelled to make use of a trick in order to be on the side of humanity. Confronted by art, either art or some lofty thought was called for and that lofty thought, in the shape of a man of lofty face, immediately stepped forward as if pushed there by a supernatural power and addressed his countrymen: "Look after my wife and my children. I'll make a path through for you." And he threw himself forthwith so as not to let cool his desire for self-sacrifice onto four or five lances and pulled down several more, as many as he could force to his chest in the act of dying. It was as if he could not embrace these iron points enough and drag them into himself to be able to die with unlimited resources and to lie on the ground and turn into a bridge for men who then trampled over his body, on the lofty thought that wanted to be trampled on. Nothing will ever again compare with such a thrashing and the way in which those lightly-clad valley and mountain folk smashed that clumsy, despicable wall and tore it and beat it to bits like tigers ripping to pieces a defenceless herd of cows. The knights had become almost totally defenceless since, being hemmed in, they could hardly move to the side. Mounted knights were popped from their horses like paper bags filled with air pop when you clap your hands on them. The herdsmen's weapons now proved frightful and their light summer clothing just right. Armour to the knights was that much more burdensome. Heads were stroked by side-swipes, only stroked apparently, and turned out to have been severed. More and more knights were being struck down, horses overturned and the power