' As
they were thus parleying appeared the body of guards that knew no
repose; and at this sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, 'This
time 'tis surely Charles.' 'No,' answered Ogger, 'not yet.' In their
wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal,
and the counts; and then Didier, no longer able to bear the light of day
or to face death, cried out with groans, 'Let us descend and hide
ourselves in the bowels of the earth, far from the face and the fury of
so terrible a foe.' Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience
what were the power and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson
by long consuetude in better days, then said, 'When ye shall behold the
crops shaking for fear in the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino
overflowing the walls of the city with their waves blackened with steel
(iron), then may ye think that Charles is coming.' He had not ended
these words when there began to be seen in the west, as it were a black
cloud, raised by the northwest wind or by Boreas, which turned the
brightest day into awful shadows.
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