The knight of Chaumontel seized his long lance and jumped upon his horse, which one of his seconds held for him, while Jocelyn, pale and deeply moved, said to Mazurec, while giving him his stick: "Courage!... Follow my advice ... I expect you will kill that coward ... But one last word.... It regards your mother ... Did she never tell you the name of your father?"
"Never ... as I told you this morning in prison. My mother always avoided speaking to me of my father."
"And her name was Gervaise?" asked Jocelyn pensively. "What was the color of her hair and eyes?"
"Her hair was blonde, her eyes black. Poor mother."
"And had she no other mark?"
"She had a small scar above her right eye-brow—"
The clarions sounded at this point. It was the signal for the judicial duel. Unable to restrain his tears, Jocelyn pressed Mazurec in his arms and said to him: "I may not at a moment like this reveal to you the cause of the double interest that you inspire me ... My suspicions and hopes, perhaps, deceive me ... But courage ... Hit your enemy on the head."
"Courage!" put in Adam the Devil in an undertone. "In order to keep your blood boiling, think of your wife ... remember the betrothed of your seigneur laughed at you.... Kill the thief, and patience.... It will some day be our turn to laugh at the noble damosel.... Think above all of your wife ... of her last nights shame and of your own.... Remember that you have both been made forever unhappy, and fall to bravely upon that nobleman! Be brave.... You have a cane, nails and teeth!"
Mazurec the Lambkin uttered a cry of rage and rushed into the lists at the moment when, in answer to a motion from the Sire of Nointel, the marshal of the tourney gave the signal for the combat to the appellant and appellee by calling three times the consecrated words: "Let them go!"
The noble spectators on the platform laughed in advance at the sorry discomfiture of Jacques Bonhomme; but among the plebeian crowd all hearts stopped beating with anxiety at this decisive moment. The knight of Chaumontel, a vigorous man, armed in full panoply, mounted on a tall charger covered with iron, and his long lance in rest, occupied the center of the arena, while Mazurec dashed to the spot barefoot, clad in his blouse and holding his stick in his hands. At sight of the serf, the knight, who, out of contempt for such an adversary, had disdained to lower his visor, put the spurs to his horse, and lowering his pointed iron-headed lance, charged upon the serf certain of transfixing him then and there, and then trampling over him with his horse. But Mazurec, mindful of Jocelyn's recommendations, avoided the lance thrust by suddenly letting himself down flat upon his face; and then, partly rising up at the moment when the horse was about to grind him under its hoofs, he dealt the animal two such heavy blows with his stick on its forelegs that the courser, stung with pain, reared, slipped its footing and almost fell over, while its rider was shaken out of position on the saddle.