Page:Marquis de Sade - Adelaide of Brunswick.djvu/22

 year. The ladies went in carriages and the men went on horseback, galloping along beside them. This first day was only one of exploration and the whole afternoon was spent in the pleasant clearings of the forest where the sweet air and the perfume of the flowers reminded one that this was the season of love.

The next day Frederick, having asked the princess the time which she had selected for the wedding day, the latter replied that she would leave to her august husband the choice of the day, which she said would be the most beautiful in her life. Frederick immediately began to plan the convocation of the court and the tournament which must accompany the ceremony. These exercises, at the same time military and chivalrous, were not yet, in that century, known under the name of tournaments; they were called jousting. Their origin was old and went back to the time of Theodoric (454?-526) who used them in order to be able to select the best men to replace the gladiators who had been banned by him. These games then spread to Verona and Venice and from there to other nations. In 870 the children of Louis I (Le Débonnaire) of France were brought together by these games and in 920, Henri I of Saxony, to celebrate his coronation, gave a festivity in which soldiers fought on horseback. In 1559 King Henri II of France was killed in a tournament. He was wounded in the eye with a blow of a lance, and jousting was abolished in France from that time on. Such was the type of entertainment, so agreeable and rare at that time, which the Prince of Saxony wished to give his bride.

With this in mind, all the knights of Saxony were invited to this event and they all came, not with the brilliance which was displayed in later centuries, but at least with all the pomp which their circumstances and fortunes permitted. There were no escutcheons on which heraldic emblems were emblazoned, since these decorations did not come until after the Crusades. But the jousting took place on horseback and afterwards the fighters came to pay homage to the ladies who were watching the event from stands built around the esplanade of the chateau.

Adelaide, placed on the balcony which overlooked the esplanade, had already seen the Prince, her husband, win twice