And here it would be easy to describe the company which arrived, and
make display of antiquarian lore. Now we would represent a cavalcade of
knights arriving, with their pages carrying their shining helms of gold,
and the stout esquires, bearers of lance and banner. Anon would arrive
a fat abbot on his ambling pad, surrounded by the white-robed companions
of his convent. Here should come the gleemen and jonglers, the
minstrels, the mountebanks, the party-colored gipsies, the dark-eyed,
nut-brown Zigeunerinnen; then a troop of peasants chanting Rhine-songs,
and leading in their ox-drawn carts the peach-cheeked girls from the
vine-lands. Next we would depict the litters blazoned with armorial
bearings, from between the broidered curtains of which peeped out
the swan-like necks and the haughty faces of the blond ladies of the
castles. But for these descriptions we have not space; and the reader
is referred to the account of the tournament in the ingenious novel of
"Ivanhoe," where the above phenomena are described at length. Suffice it
to say, that Otto and his companions arrived at the town of Cleves, and,
hastening to a hostel, reposed themselves after the day's march, and
prepared them for the encounter of the morrow.
That morrow came: and as the sports were to begin early, Otto and his
comrades hastened to the field, armed with their best bows and arrows,
you may be sure, and eager to distinguish themselves; as were the
multitude of other archers assembled.
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