ame and he slept on still; but by seven all the camp was loudly
astir, for they had promised the enemy to begin the battle at eight.
Rodriguez breakfasted lightly; for, now that the day of his dreams was
come at last and all his hopes depended on the day, an anxiety for many
things oppressed him. It was as though his castle, rosy and fair in
dreams, chilled with its huge cold rocks all the air near it: it was as
though Rodriguez touched it at last with his hands and felt a dankness
of which he had never dreamed.

Then it came to the hour of eight and his anxieties passed.

The army was now drawn up before its tents in line, but the enemy was
not yet ready and so they had to wait.

When the signal at length was given and the cannoniers fired their
pieces, and the musketoons were shot off, many men fell. Now Rodriguez,
with Morano, was placed on the right, and either through a slight
difference in numbers or because of an unevenness in the array of
battle they a little overlapped the enemy's left. When a few men fell
wounded there by the discharge of the musketoons this overlapping was
even more pronounced.

Now the leaders of that fair army scorned all unknightly devices, and
would never have descended to any vile ruse de guerre. The reproach can
therefore never be made against them that they ever intended to
outflank their enemy. Yet, when both armies advanced after the
discharge of the musketoons and the merry noise of the cannon, this
occurred as the result of chance, which no leader can be held
accountable for; so that those that speak of treachery in this battle,
and deliberate outflanking, lie.

Now Rodriguez as he advanced with his sword, when the musketoons were
empty, had already chosen his adversary. For he had carefully watched
those opposite to him, before any smoke should obscure them, and had
selected the one who from the splendour of his dress might be expected
to possess the finest castle. Certainly this adversary outshone those
amongst whom he stood, and gave fair promise of owning goodly
possessions, for he wore a fine green cloak over a dress of lilac, and
his helm and cuirass had a look of crafty workmanship. Towards him
Rodriguez marched.

Then began fighting foot to foot, and there was a pretty laying on of
swords. And had there been a poet there that day then the story of
their fight had come down to you, my reader, all that way from the
Pyrenees, down all those hundreds of years, and this t