When the judicial ordeal closed, his holiness and consistorials left the lists, that the people might enjoy their more profane amusements free from the embarrassment imposed by their sacred presence, Cardinal Buenaventura showing especial chagrin in being obliged to acknowledge that effectual grace was not sufficient. The only representatives of the priesthood remaining in the lists, who were not in the actual charge of souls, were abbots and priors, with their canons of inferior calibre, none of the Episcopal diocesans venturing to remain, although many cast longing and critical glances to the appointments and bearings of the knights through whose arrayed ranks they filed out of the lists on their way to the vatican. The judicial brotherhood with their dismal bar to joviality, and prisoners, disappeared within the gates of their sanctuary. The relief from the combined influence of the departed became immediately manifest in the bantering freedom of all the gradations of the assemblage; the clergy leading in the display of wit and gallantry, but in a manner that frequently trenched upon the laity’s interested sense of propriety. _The Joust_, from the delay occasioned by the judicial combat, was now hastened, and the two processions were but shortly housed before the first two lances were splintered. Count San Pietro Marceroni, Captain of the Papal Guard, was the Italian’s Mouthpat champion, and had succeeded in gaining a slight advantage in bearing off the cockscomb that surmounted the helmet of Count Saint Poll de Parrote, a French knight of great renown, as an adept in the chivalric accomplishments of the age, as well as in the gastronomic art, having been elected by the Pope chief of cuisine, esteemed the most important office within his gift. Between the two knights there had been a warm rivalry for the favors of Princessa Idolisima Canonica, a niece of the pope, after his election to the Papal chair. As upon the result of the encounter the pope’s favor depended, the friends of Count Parrote, confident in his successful prowess, had presented him the helmet he wore as a presage of victory. This was surmounted with a cock’s head, neck, wings, tail, and comb, all in exultant elevation, as if sounding the highest octave in the clarion notes of victory. His countrymen, with still greater assurance, had caused the artist to execute a wreath composed of hearts, spear-heads, and trefoil, worked in gold; this circled and was attached to the cock’s crest. When this was borne off by the well directed aim of Count Marceroni’s spear point, I will acknowledge that I felt an instinctive thrill of elation. Still if his signal skill had resulted otherwise than in a bloodless victory, notwithstanding the flippant presumption of Count Parrote, I am assured that I should have felt a tremor of dismayed horror. In sustaining the reputation he had won Count Marceroni successively overthrew the stalwart son of Baron Biermywitzs, a young knight with an excellent