up, and great skill displayed on both sides; until Bayard, by a feint, struck him such a blow in the throat, that, despite his gorget, the weapon penetrated four fingers deep. The wounded Spaniard grasped his adversary, and, struggling with him, they both rolled on the ground; when Bayard, drawing his dagger and thrusting its point in the nostrils of the Spaniard, exclaimed, “Señor Alonzo, surrender--or you are a dead man!” a speech which appeared quite useless, as Don Diego de Guignonnes, his second, exclaimed, “_Señor Bayardo, es muerto; vincido haveys!_” Bayard, says the chronicler, would have given a hundred thousand crowns to have spared his life; but, as matters turned out, he fell upon his knees, kissed the ground three times, and then dragged his dead enemy out of the camp, saying to the deceased’s second, “Señor Don Diego, have I done enough?” to which the other piteously replied, “Too much, Señor, for the honour of Spain!” when Bayard very generously made him a present of the corpse, although he had a right to do whatever he thought proper with it; an act highly praised by Brantôme, who says it is difficult to say which act did him most honour,--the not having ignominiously dragged the body like the carcase of a dog by a leg or an arm out of the field, or having condescended to fight while labouring under an ague; as an ague in those days (sturdy dogs!) was not considered a sufficient reason to decline a combat. As fighting became a matter of fashion, and therefore of necessity, it was impossible to be too punctilious in taking offence. Any subject, however trivial, was considered sufficient to warrant a combat, and required blood to wipe off a supposed stain upon a factitious honour; and, when blood could not be obtained for this vital purpose by fair means, assassination was not deemed beneath the dignity of the offended, or incompatible with honour’s laws. Thus we find a Franche-Comté nobleman running another through the body in the very porch of a church, while he was presenting him some holy water; and two other high-born worthies fighting it out before the altar, to decide who had the best right to a seat of precedence, or the first use of the censer. Tilts and tournaments were simply _simulacra_ of actual combats, training youth to deeds of arms under the flattering auspices of the fair sex, that they might the more diligently and expertly commit murder whenever it suited ambition, fanaticism, or love. What the ladies expected from their champions cannot be better expressed than in the injunction of the Dame des Belles Cousines to little Jean de Saintré, a subject which Scott has admirably translated in the following quaint and appropriate language:--