The trumpets sounding a parley for the announcement of the regulations of the day, and terms of the challengers, caused us to give hasty thanks to the tribune for his timely admonitions, with the promise that we would try and hold our feelings aloof from passionate excitement in behalf of all except those in whose aid we had enlisted. The lull that succeeded the herald’s call permitted us to hear the alheu of the pursuivant, but the special conditions of the challengers were drowned by the renewed buzz of voices. Gathering strength from personal retorts, they gave birth to sounds ranging from the high nasal to the low guttural of the German dialects, accommodating themselves to fragmentary enunciations of words, and the most dissonant syllabic combinations possible in conjuration from the rumbling intonations of indigestion. These crudities were jargonized with the curt unconsolidated English, the fustian croak of the Dutch, Gallic flippancy, slipshod Irish, and the nasal bagpipe drone or burr of the Scotch; to which was added the quavering Italian, the soft flow of the Spanish, with cadenced harmony of intonation, and the horrible rasping cartilaginous utterances of the Jewish nose, so repulsively selfish that endurance shudders in memory of the infliction. The tumult of tongues intercepted and confused the herald’s announcement, so that we were dependent upon the pantomimic acts of the stewards and beadles for an interpretation of the decrees regulating the combat. The Coliseos were in no way anxious to witness the medlarious enactments, so we were preferred to the most eligible positions for the gratification of our newly fledged curiosity, which I am ashamed to confess was over eager, and for the occasion must have lowered us in the estimation of our cousins. Our position exposed to us, in side view, the entire multitude in its caste gradations, from the canopied pope and cardinals and their created nobility, with the “fair ladyes” occupying the pavilion opposite, upward through the terraced ascent to the “strident gods,” who worried each other with true mythological zest when disengaged from the supervision of those below. When eager expectation was at its height, attention was diverted from the lists by solemn long drawn blasts of sackbuts accompanied with the roll of drums. This new phase closed the mouths of yelping instinct, and with the awed hush, the object cause of the doleful braying made its appearance from the gates of a dovecot abbey. This was a priestly procession moving with slow cadenced steps to the sound of an anthemed dirge. The tribune, who seemed to be intuitively apprized of all the movements in the routine phases of priestcraft, informed me that the procession preceded by the palled bier indicated a judicial combat, which was instituted for the final decision by the judgment of God of right and wrong in argument, as well as the guilt and innocence of persons accused of crimes. Farther exposition was anticipated by the