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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.
High silken pavilions or colored marquees, shooting up from among the crowd of meaner dwellings, marked where the great lords and barons of Leon and Castile displayed their standards, while over the white roofs, as far as eye could reach, the waving of ancients, pavons, pensils, and banderoles, with flash of gold and glow of colors, proclaimed that all the chivalry of Iberia were mustered in the plain beneath them.
They say that he himself led the charge, covered in a wonderful silken surcoat, colour of a bullfinch's breast, and wrought upon in black and white heraldry. They say that at the sight of the pensils a-flutter, at the sound of the hunting-horns, the Grifons let fly a shaft a-piece; then threw down their bows and scattered. But the knights caught them. Isaac was on a hill to watch the battle.
Nor can this be thought presumption, if a man of humble and low condition venture to dilate and discourse upon the governments of Princes; for even as they that with their pensils designe out countreys, get themselves into the plains below to consider the nature of the mountains, and other high places above; and again to consider the plains below, they get up to the tops of the mountains; in like manner to understand the nature of the people, it is fit to be a Prince; and to know well the dispositions of Princes, sutes best with the understanding of a subject.
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