Lancelot had never ridden a serious joust before—and, although he had charged at hundreds of quintains and thousands of rings, he had never taken his life in his hands in earnest. In the first moment of the charge, he felt to himself: “Well, now I am off. Nothing can help me now.” In the second moment he settled down to behave automatically, in the same way as he had always behaved with the quintain and the rings.
