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Nobles and dames mingled indiscriminately together. Beautiful palfreys or well-trained glossy mules, richly caparisoned, gracefully guided by the dames and maidens, bore their part well amid the more fiery chargers of their companions.

By a little camp-fire, booted, spurred, slouch-hatted, like his troopers, and muffled in a light-blue overcoat that could not be told from theirs, the major commanding was giving brief directions to three troopers who stood silently before him, their carbines dangling from their broad shoulder-belts, with the reins of their chargers in hand.

Gray boots with red heels, to which were attached golden spurs; a scarlet cloak with gold buttons all set off to advantage his elegant and graceful figure. He bowed right and left with a melancholy smile. An old servant, with white moustache, and beard, followed with his head bent down, leading two chargers, richly comparisoned. The young ladies were silent; but they could not restrain their sobs.

The three sultans inquired of their royal guest if he had any children, to which he replied that he had two sons. The sultans then requested that he would send for them: upon which, their father dispatched a messenger to summon them to his presence. They repaired to the camp, mounted on chargers richly caparisoned, and most splendidly dressed.

They were clad in the fashion of the east, and sought their way between the trees on their right and left; but sometimes they fell in their rear, and then again dashed suddenly by them with astonishing swiftness, looking as wild as the scenery through which their chargers bounded.

In the ample stone-paved courtyard of the Schloss Grunewald, with its mysterious bubbling spring in the centre, stood the Black Baron beside his restive horse, both equally eager to be away. Round the Baron were grouped his sixteen knights and their saddled chargers, all waiting the word to mount.

It was the open sea, whose waves were still dashing with tremendous violence! It was the ocean, without any visible limits, even for those whose gaze, from their commanding position, extended over a radius of forty miles. The vast liquid plain, lashed without mercy by the storm, appeared as if covered with herds of furious chargers, whose white and disheveled crests were streaming in the wind.

The road dipped into a wood, and the colonel showed me the first battery position he occupied in France, when he commanded a 4·5 how. battery. Bécourt Chateau was so much a chateau now that Divisional Headquarters were living in tents outside. Four motor-cars stood in the courtyard; some thirty chargers were tied to the long high railings; motor despatch-riders kept coming and going.

Never have I seen the strength of noble chargers controlled and guided with so much firmness, ease, and grace as by the hand of this officer, the best horseman in Germany. The state of health in which, still with a slight fever recurring every afternoon, I returned to Gottingen was by no means cheering.

Behind were the little clump of steel-clad horsemen, their lances raised, with long pensils drooping down the oaken shafts. So silent and still were they, that they might have been metal-sheathed statues, were it not for the occasional quick, impatient stamp of their chargers, or the rattle of chamfron against neck-plates as they tossed and strained.