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Updated: June 1, 2025
Some towered up to a great height, spreading their pendulous branches over the less aspiring forms, like New England elms; others were low and bushy, and afire with scarlet blossoms, whose perfume filled the air; a few resembled gigantic grasses or great timothy stems, surmounted with nodding plumes of golden leaves, streaming out like gilt gonfalons in the breeze; but there was one species, as tall and massive as oaks, and scattered everywhere through the forest, that I could liken to nothing but enormous rose bushes in the full bloom of June.
The other three, which embrace all that is called This side the Arno, also take their names from their chief churches, and are the Quarters of Sta. Croce, Sta. Maria Novella, and San Giovanni. Each of these four quarters is divided into four gonfalons, named after the different animals or other things they carry painted on their ensigns.
Before each tent stood the lance and colours of its owner, and side by side in the centre of the camp stood the royal pavilions of Phillip of France and Richard of England, round which could be seen the gonfalons of all the nobles of Western Europe. Nothing could be gayer than the aspect of this camp as the party rode into it.
They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him the flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th of October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags also. And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these.
Its roots he fashions into household utensils. The cocoa grows where other edibles perish. It dips its bole in the salt tide, and will not thrive removed from its beloved sea. To me there is an inexpressible sentiment in the presence of these cocoa-palms. They are the symbol of the simplicity and singleness of the eternal summer of the tropics; the staff and gonfalons of the dominion of the sun.
And moss veils like banners of a marching host of Titans; pennons and bannerets of the sunset; gonfalons of the Jinn; webs of faery; oriflammes of elfland!
There are variations and incidents which could not perhaps be put down in the main body, where all the figures are worked solidly in the stitch which has been rechristened "Kensington stitch." The horses are worked in red-brown and gray crewels, some of them duly spotted and dappled, the banners and gonfalons carefully wrought in the colors and devices belonging to them.
From balcony and casement stretched the neck of every gazer. The tramp of steeds was heard at a distance the sound of clarion and trumpet; then, gleaming through the distant curve of the streets, was seen the wave of the gonfalons then, the glitter of spears and then from the whole multitude, as from one voice, arose the shout, "He comes! he comes!"
Winding up a steep ascent that led from the plain, when he reached the summit, the curve in the road shewed him the whole army on its march; the gonfalons waving the armour flashing in the sun, line after line, like a river of steel, and the whole plain bristling with the array of that moving war; while the solemn tread of the armed thousands fell subdued and stifled at times by martial and exulting music.
Before each tent stood the lance and colors of its owner, and side by side in the center of the camp stood the royal pavilions of Philip of France and Richard of England, round which could be seen the gonfalons of all the nobles of Western Europe. Nothing could be gayer than the aspect of this camp as the party rode into it.
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