"Laissez-aller!" cried the marshals, giving the signal to begin.
Above, in her white box, the princess turned pale. With bated breath and parted lips, she watched the lines sweep forward, and, like two great waves meeting, collide with a crash. The dust that arose seemed an all-enshrouding mist. Beneath it the figures appeared, vague, undefined, in a maze of uncertainty.
"Oh!" exclaimed Louise, striving to penetrate the cloud; "he is victorious!"
"They have killed him!" said Jacqueline, at the same time staring toward another part of the field.
"Killed him!—what—" began the princess, now rosy with excitement.
"No; he has won," added the maid, in the next breath, as a portion of the obscuring mantle was swept aside.
"Of course! Where are your eyes?" rejoined her mistress triumphantly. "The duke, is one of the emperor's greatest knights."
"In this case, Madam, it is but natural your sight should be better than my own," half-mockingly returned the maid.
And, in truth, the princess was right, for the king's guest, through overwhelming strength and greater momentum, had lightly plucked from his seat a stalwart adversary. Others of his following failed not in the "attaint," and horses and troopers floundered in the sand. Apart from the duke's victory, two especial incidents, one comic, stood out in the confused picture.
That which partook of the humorous aspect, and was seen and appreciated by all, had for its central figure an unwilling actor, the king's hunchback. Like the famous steed builded by the Greeks, Triboulet's "wooden horse" contained unknown elements of danger, and even while the jester was congratulating himself upon absolute immunity from peril the nag started and quivered. At the flourish of the brass instruments his ears, that had lain back, were now pricked forward; he had once, in his palmy, coltish time, been a battle charger, and, perhaps, some memory of those martial days, the waving of plumes and the clashing of arms, reawoke his combative spirit of old. Or, possibly his brute intelligence penetrated the dwarf's knavish pusillanimity, and, changing his tactics that he might still range on the side of perversity, resolved himself from immobility into a rampant agency of motion. Furiously he dashed into the thick of the conflict, and Triboulet, paralyzed with fear and dropping his lance, was borne helplessly onward, execrating the nag and his capricious humor.