Contest at the Barriers
Many knights are content with a single passage at arms, but some who have been successful once tempt fortune a second time. These are likely to be the professional champions, and they give remarkable exhibitions of perfect horsemanship and lance play. As the afternoon advances, for variation, there is a fight at the barriers. A stout wooden bar about waist high is set across the middle of the lists, and seven knights from one seigneury and seven from another undertake to cross the same, while preventing the other party from advancing. They fight on foot with sword and mace. It is desperate work; and when at last one party has forced its way across, four of the defeated side have broken bones, despite their hauberks, and all-but-broken heads, despite their helmets.
KNIGHTLY COMBAT ON FOOT
(From an old print.)
Then a very arrogant baron who has already won three ransoms determines to increase his wealth. Stationing himself at the head of the lists, he bids his pursuivant challenge all comers. There is a long hush. Sire Paul has made such a trade of his prowess that assuredly there seems something mercantile about his valor, yet assuredly he is a terrible man. Suddenly the lodges begin to cry, "A St. Aliquis!" Sire Aimery himself (who earlier had broken three lances very neatly with a friend) is sending down his pursuivant.
All the older knights mutter: "A fearful risk for the lad! Let him pray to his saints." Conon demands angrily of Olivier, "Could not you keep back the boy from this folly?" But does not Heaven favor the young and brave? Perhaps it is because Sire Paul has let himself become careless; perhaps because his squire has forgotten to tighten his saddle girths; perhaps because St. Génevieve cannot allow her votary to undergo disgrace thus early in his knighthood. In any case, results confound the wiseacres. "The pitcher that goes too often to the well is broken," dryly observes Father Grégoire, when at the first course Sire Paul is ignominiously flung from the saddle. Hé! Sire Aimery will now have more sleeves, girdles, and stockings than can ever flutter from any one lance, and his kinsfolk are out of their wits for joy! No victory could ever be more praised and popular.
So ends the jousting, and that night round St. Aliquis blaze the great camp fires of the company, all cooking most hearty suppers (after fasting almost all day), everybody visiting from tent to tent, fighting the day's contests over again, condoling with the defeated and praising the victors. Alliances, both military and matrimonial, are negotiated between consequential barons; the jongleurs produce tricks and songs; there is a great deal of dancing by the red firelight; and also, one fears, much hard drinking and most unseemly revelry.