e accompanied by a larger band
of warriors?' 'You will see what he is when he comes,' replied Ogger,
'but as to what will become of us I know nothing.' As they were thus
parleying appeared the body of guards that knew no repose; and at this
sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, 'This time 'tis surely
Charles.' 'No,' answered Ogger, 'not yet.' In their wake came the
bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal, and the counts;
and then Didier, no longer able to bear the light of day or to face
death, cried out with groans, 'Let us descend and hide ourselves in the
bowels of the earth, far from the face and the fury of so terrible a foe.
Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience what were the power
and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson by long consuetude
in better days, then said, 'When ye shall behold the crops shaking for
fear in the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino overflowing the
walls of the city with their waves blackened with steel (iron), then may
ye think that Charles is coming.' He had not ended these words when
there began to be seen in the west, as it were a black cloud, raised by
the north-west wind or by Boreas, which turned the brightest day into
awful shadows. But as the emperor drew nearer and nearer, the gleam of
arms caused to shine on the people shut up within the city a day more
gloomy than any kind of night. And then appeared Charles himself, that
man of steel, with his head encased in a helmet of steel, his hands
garnished with gauntlets of steel, his heart of steel and his shoulders
of marble protected by a cuirass of steel, and his left hand armed with a
lance of steel which he held aloft in the air, for as to his right hand
he kept that continually on the hilt of his invincible sword. The
outside of his thighs, which the rest, for their greater ease in mounting
a horseback, were wont to leave unshackled even by straps, he wore
encircled by plates of steel. What shall I say concerning his boots?
All the army were wont to have them invariably of steel; on his buckler
there was nought to be seen but steel; his horse was of the color and the
strength of steel. All those who went before the monarch, all those who
marched at his side, all those who followed after, even the whole mass of
the army, had armor of the like sort, so far as the means of each
permitted. The fields and the highways were covered with steel: the
points of steel reflect