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Updated: June 26, 2025
From this lofty eyrie they could witness reviews of the troops and catch glimpses of the gay cavalcades that came in and out of the fortress, and in a small courtyard was a bazar where certain favored merchants from the city were allowed to come and exhibit goods to the ladies of the court. But these were the only glimpses female royalty ever had of the outer world.
As the two cavalcades drew nearer to each other, Abdul pressed forward to his master's side. His long sight, well used to desert distances, had clearly discerned what to Michael was still indistinct, blurred by the sun. "One lady in party, Effendi." Michael showed surprise.
However, long trains of forage and commissary-wagons may be seen passing to and fro, with horses and mules in mud from "stem to stern." Cavalcades of mudded horses and riders traverse the camps and adjoining fields in various directions.
There the Paduans held their masques and holiday-shows; there rose the mighty castle that was stormed on a feast-day by armed men with missiles of oranges and pomegranates; there stalked Donatello's mighty wooden horse, towering high above the crowd in the Carnival cavalcades; there, after Ezzelin the Terrible had for years enriched the ground with Paduan blood and hung the Paduan bodies high on gibbets, the freed and happy people celebrated the expulsion of the tyrant by instituting the famous horse-races, in which the prizes were scarlet cloth and gloves and a sparrow-hawk.
The champing, the pawing, the mounting, and the clattering of these bright cavalcades, with the music of the women excited by motion, furnished a picture of wealth and gayety and happy country life that cheered the whole neighborhood, and contrasted strangely with the stern Spartan life of him who had persuaded himself he was the rightful owner of Huntercombe Hall.
When he visited a town, cavalcades met him afar out, and as he approached, little girls in white and boys dressed in velvet ran before and strewed flowers in front of his carriage. Oh, the Duke of Mantua was a great man! In his retinue was a troop of comedians, a court fool, two dwarfs for luck, seven cooks, three alchemists and an astrologer.
Read these romances now, with their knights and fair ladies, their perilous adventures and tender love-making, their minstrelsy and tournaments and gorgeous cavalcades, as if humanity were on parade, and life itself were one tumultuous holiday in the open air, and you have an epitome of the whole childish, credulous soul of the Middle Ages.
Some of us tried to recall Irving's graphic descriptions in the "Conquest of Granada" of the scenes around this city; of the struggles between the Christian knights under the banner of Ferdinand, and the Moorish cavaliers under the standard of Mahomet; of fields covered with silken canopies; of cavalcades of warriors in jeweled armor and nodding plumes; of hand-to-hand conflicts and daring exploits; of the siege and capture of the city and expulsion of the Moors from Spain.
The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams a music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies.
How splendid and fanciful must one of those domestic cavalcades have been, where the beautiful dames were mounted on palfreys magnificently caparisoned, with embroidered harness, all tinkling with silver bells, attended by cavaliers richly attired on prancing steeds, and followed by pages and serving-men, as we see them represented in old tapestry!
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