majestic air she waves her embroidered handkerchief, and immediately her knight of honor utters three times the consecrated formula: "Let them go! Let them go! Let them go!" The two sets break loose; the horses are put to a gallop; and, lances in rest, they rush to the center of the lists, where they dash against one another, horses and riders, with an incredible clatter of hardware. In the shock the larger number of lances fly into splinters. The disarmed tilters thus declare themselves vanquished, and their armor and mounting belong by right to the vanquisher. Accordingly, these tourneys are as much a game of hazard as is a game of dice. Not a few renowned tilters, hankering after florins more than after a puerile glory, derive large revenues from their skill in these ridiculous jousts; almost always do the adversaries whom they have overcome ransom their arms and horses with considerable sums. At a signal of the Sire of Nointel, a few minutes' truce followed upon the disarming of two of the knights who rolled down upon the thick bed of sand that the ground is prudently covered with. There is nothing so pitifully grotesque as the appearance of these disarmed gallants. Their valets raise them up in almost one lump within their thick iron shell that impedes their movements, and with legs stiff and apart, they reach the barrier steaming in perspiration, seeing that, in order to soften the pressure, these noble combatants wear under their armor a skin shirt and hose thickly padded with horse's hair. The vanquished abandon the lists in disgrace, while the vanquishers, after prancing over the arena, approach the platform where the queen of the tournament is enthroned. There they lower their lances to her in token of gallant homage. The charmed Gloriande answers them with a condescending smile and they leave the lists in triumph. The remaining knights now continue the struggle on foot and with swords--swords no less "courteous" than their lances, without either point or edge, so that these valiant champions skirmish with steel bars three feet and a half long, and they carry themselves heroically in a combat that is all the less perilous, seeing that they are protected against all possible danger by their padded undergarments laid over by an impenetrable armor.