PART III.—When the lovers had quitted their abode in the wood, Orlando, by chance, arrived there, and saw every where, all round him, in-doors and out-of-doors, inscriptions of "Angelica and Medoro." He tries in vain to disbelieve his eyes; finally, learns the whole story from the owner of the cottage, and loses his senses. What he did in that state, both in the neighbourhood and afar off, where he runs naked through the country. His arrival among his brother Paladins; and the result. (continued 2)

"Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony,—the only person visible at that moment in all the place. In a few minutes the Duke of Albany appeared below it, making the signal to which I had been accustomed; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes of both, and let down the ladder.

"Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mysterious situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little distance; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely houses, perceived all that was going on.

"I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which the princess had put off that night; and as I was not unlike her in air and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her very self. The duke impatiently mounted the ladder; I received him as impatiently in my arms; and circumstances, though from very different feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour.

"You may imagine the grief of Ariodante. It rose at once to despair. He did not call out; so that, had not his brother followed him, still worse would have ensued than did; for he drew his sword, and was proceeding in distraction to fall upon it, when Lurcanio rushed in and stopped him. 'Miserable brother!' exclaimed he, 'are you mad? Would you die for a woman like this? You see what a wretch she is. I discern all your case at once, and, thank God, have preserved you to turn your sword where it ought to be turned, against the defender of such a pattern of infamy.'

"Ariodante put up his sword, and suffered himself to be led away by his brother. He even pretended, in a little while, to be able to review his condition calmly, but not the less had he secretly resolved to perish. Next day he disappeared, nobody knew whither; and about eight days afterwards, news was secretly brought to Ginevra, by a pilgrim, that he had thrown himself from a headland into the sea.

"'I met him by chance,' said the pilgrim, 'and we happened to be standing on the top of the headland, conversing, when he cried out to me, 'Relate to the princess what you beheld on parting from me; and add, that the cause of it was my having seen too much. Happy had it been for me had I been blind!' And with these words,' concluded the pilgrim, 'he leaped into the sea below, and was instantly buried beneath it.'

"The princess turned as pale as death at this story, and for a while remained stupefied. But, alas! what a scene was it my fate to witness, when she found herself in her chamber at night, able to give way to her misery. She tore her clothes, and her very flesh, and her beautiful hair, and kept repeating the last words of her lover with amazement and despair.

The disappearance of Ariodante, and a rumour which transpired of his having slain himself on account of some hidden anguish, surprised and afflicted the whole court. But his brother Lurcanio evinced more and more his impatience at it, and let fall the most terrible words. At length he entered the court when the king was holding one of his fullest assemblies, and laid open, as he thought, the whole matter; setting forth how his unhappy brother had secretly, but honourably, loved the princess; how she had professed to love him in return; and how she had grossly deceived him, and played him impudently false before his own eyes. He concluded with calling upon her unknown paramour to come forth, and shew reasons against him with his sword why she ought not to die.

"I need not tell you what the king suffered at hearing this strange and terrible recital. He lost no time in sharply investigating the truth of the allegation; and for this purpose, among other proceedings, he sent for the ladies of his daughter's chamber. You may judge, sir,—especially as, I blush to say it, I still loved the Duke of Albany,—that I could not await an examination like that. I hastened to meet the duke, who was as anxious to get me out of the way as I was to go; and to this end, professing the greatest zeal for my security, he commissioned two men to convey me secretly to a fortress he possessed in this forest. 'Tis at no great distance from the place where Heaven sent you to my deliverance. You saw, sir, how little those wretches intended to take me anywhere except to my grave; and by this you may judge of the agonies and shame I have endured in knowing what a dupe I have been to one of the cruelest of men. But thus it is that Love treats his most faithful servants."

The damsel here concluded her story; and the Paladin, rejoicing at having become possessed of all that was required to establish the falsehood of the duke, proceeded with her on his road to St. Andrews, where the lists had been set up for the determination of the question. The king and his court were anxiously praying at that instant for the arrival of some champion to fight with the dreaded Lurcanio; for the month, as I have stated, was nearly expired, and this terrible brother appeared to have the business all his own way; so that the stake was soon to be looked for at which the hapless Ginevra was to die.

Fast and eagerly the Paladin rode for St. Andrews, with his squire and the trembling damsel, who was now agitated for new reasons, though the knight gave her assurances of his protection. They were not far from the city when they found people talking of a champion who had certainly arrived, but whose name was unknown, and his face constantly concealed by his visor. Even his own squire, it seems, did not know him; for the man had but lately been taken into his service. Rinaldo, as soon as he entered the city, left the damsel in a place of security, and then spurred his horse to the scene of action, when he found the accuser and the champion in the very midst of the fight. The Paladin, whose horse, notwithstanding the noise of the combat, had been heard coming like a tempest, and whose sudden and heroical appearance turned all eyes towards him, rode straight to the royal canopy, and, begging the king to stop the combat, disclosed the whole state of the matter, to the enchantment of all present, except the Duke of Albany; for the villain himself was on horseback there in state as grand constable, and had been feasting his miserable soul with the hope of seeing Ginevra condemned. The combatants were soon changed. Instead of Lurcanio and the unknown champion (whom the new comer had taken care to extol for his generosity), it was the Paladin and the Duke that were opposed; and horribly did the latter's heart fail him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when life forsook him. Rinaldo then took off his own helmet; and the king, who had seen the great Paladin before, and who felt more rejoiced at his daughter's deliverance than if he had lost and regained his crown, lifted up his hands to heaven, and thanked God for having honoured her innocence with so illustrious a defender.

The other champion, who, in the mean time, had been looking on through the eyelets of his visor, was now entreated to disclose his own face. He did so with peculiar emotion, and king and all recognised with transport the face of the loved and, as it was supposed, lost Ariodante. The pilgrim, however, had told no falsehood. The lover had indeed thrown himself into the sea, and disappeared from the man's eyes; but (as oftener happens than people suppose) the death which was desired when not present became hated when it was so; and Ariodante, lover as he was, rising at a little distance, struck out lustily for the shore, and reached it.[4] He felt even a secret contempt for his attempt to kill himself; yet putting up at an hermitage, became interested in the reports concerning the princess, whose sorrow flattered, and whose danger, though he could not cease to think her guilty, afflicted him. He grew exasperated with the very brother he loved, when he found that Lurcanio pursued her thus to the death; and on all these accounts he made his appearance at the place of combat to fight him, though not to slay. His purpose was to seek his own death. He concluded that Ginevra would then see who it was that had really loved her, while his brother would mourn the rashness which made him pursue the destruction of a woman. "Guilty she is," thought he, "but no such guilt can deserve so cruel a punishment. Besides, I could not bear that she should die before me. She is still the woman I love, still the idol of my thoughts. Right or wrong, I must die in her behalf."

With this intention he purchased a suit of black armour, and obtained a squire unknown in those parts, and so made his appearance in the lists. What ensued there I need not repeat; but the king was so charmed with the issue of the whole business, with the resuscitation of the favourite whom he thought dead, and the restoration of the more than life of his beloved daughter, that, to the joy of all Scotland, and at the special instance of the great Paladin, he made the two lovers happy without delay; and the bride brought her husband for dowry the title and estates of the man who had wronged him.

[Footnote 1: The main point of this story, the personation of Ginevra by one of her ladies, has been repeated by many writers—among others by Shakspeare, in Much Ado about Nothing. The circumstance is said to have actually occurred in Ferrara, and in Ariosto's own time. Was Ariosto himself a party? "Ariodante" almost includes his name; and it is certain that he was once in love with a lady of the name of Ginevra.]

[Footnote 2: Rinaldo is an ambassador, and one upon very urgent business; yet he halts by the way in search of adventures. This has been said to be in the true taste of knight-errantry; and in one respect it is so. We may imagine, however, that the ship is wind-bound, and that he meant to return to it on change of weather. The Caledonian Forest, it is to be observed, is close at hand.]

[Footnote 3: All honour and glory to the manly and loving poet!

"Lavezzuola," says Panizzi, "doubts the conjugal concord of beasts, more particularly of bears. 'Ho letto presso degno autore un orso aver cavato un occhio ad un orsa con la zampa.' (I have read in an author worthy of credit, that a bear once deprived a she-bear of an eye with a blow of his paw.) The reader may choose between Ariosto and this nameless author, which of them is to be believed. I, of course, am for my poet."—Vol. i. p. 84. I am afraid, however, that Lavezzuola is right. Even turtle-doves are said not to be always the models of tenderness they are supposed to be. Brutes have even devoured their offspring. The violence is most probably owing (at least in excessive cases) to some unnatural condition of circumstances.]

[Footnote 4: This is quite in Ariosto's high and bold taste for truth under all circumstances. A less great and unmisgiving poet would have had the lover picked up by a fisherman.]

SUSPICION [1]

It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the world than a just prince—a thoroughly good man, who shuns no part of the burden of his duty, though it bend him double; who loves and cares for his people as a father does for his children, and who is almost incessantly occupied in their welfare, very seldom for his own.

Such a man puts himself in front of dangers and difficulties in order that he may be a shield to others; for he is not a mercenary, taking care of none but himself when he sees the wolf coming; he is the right good shepherd, staking his own life in that of his flock, and knowing the faces of every one of them, just as they do his own.

Such princes, in times of old, were Saturn, Hercules, Jupiter, and others—men who reigned gently, yet firmly, equal to all chances that came, and worthy of the divine honours that awaited them. For mankind could not believe that they quitted the world in the same way as other men. They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of demigods.

When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and, at all events, public decency is observed. Oh, blessed kingdoms that are governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the mercy of a man without justice—a fellow-creature without feelings!

Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of posterity. Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might. I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.

But they are not without torments of their own. At the core of their own hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies. There he stands every day and every moment—one who was born of the same mother with Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his infant brethren before they saw the light. His name is Suspicion.[2]

Yes, Suspicion;—the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being. This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and lowly. He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures. Well may the man hug himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants are in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret. The fear which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch afraid of every soul among them.

Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon the hearts of his race. He was one of the first who took to the custom of wearing beards, for, great as he was, he had a fear of the race of barbers! He built a tower in his palace, guarded by deep ditches and thick walls. It had but one drawbridge and one bay-window. There was no other opening; so that the very light of day had scarcely admittance, or the inmates a place to breathe at. In this tower he slept; and it was his wife's business to put a ladder down for him when he came in. A dog kept watch at the drawbridge; and except the dog and the wife, not a soul was to be discerned about the place. Yet he had such little trust in her, that he always sent spies to look about the room before he withdrew for the night.

Of what use was it all? The woman herself killed him with his own sword, and his soul went straight to hell.

Rhadamanthus, the judge there, thrust him under the boiling lake, but was astonished to find that he betrayed no symptoms of anguish. He did not weep and howl as the rest did, or cry out, "I burn, I burn!" He evinced so little suffering, that Rhadamanthus said, "I must put this fellow into other quarters." Accordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the torments are beyond all others.

Nevertheless, even here he seemed to be under no distress. At length they asked him the reason. The wretch then candidly acknowledged, that hell itself had no torments for him, compared with those which suspicion had given him on earth.

The sages of hell laid their heads together at this news. Amelioration of his lot on the part of a sinner was not to be thought of in a place of eternal punishment; so they called a parliament together, the result of which was an unanimous conclusion, that the man should be sent back to earth, and consigned to the torments of suspicion for ever.

He went; and the earthly fiend re-entered his being anew with a subtlety so incorporate, that their two natures were identified, and he became SUSPICION ITSELF. Fruits are thus engrafted on wild stocks. One colour thus becomes the parent of many, when the painter takes a portion of this and of that from his palette in order to imitate flesh.

The new being took up his abode on a rock by the sea-shore, a thousand feet high, girt all about with mouldering crags, which threatened every instant to fall. It had a fortress on the top, the approach to which was by seven drawbridges, and seven gates, each locked up more strongly than the other; and here, now this moment, constantly thinking Death is upon him, Suspicion lives in everlasting terror. He is alone. He is ever watching. He cries out from the battlements, to see that the guards are awake below, and never does he sleep day or night. He wears mail upon mail, and mail again, and feels the less safe the more he puts on; and is always altering and strengthening everything on gate, and on barricado, and on ditch, and on wall. And do whatever he will, he never seems to have done enough.

* * * * *

Great poet, and good man, Ariosto! your terrors are better than Dante's; for they warn, as far as warning can do good, and they neither afflict humanity nor degrade God.

Spenser has imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry; for, by a curious intermixture of all which the mind can experience from such a fiction, pleasant it is in the midst of its sublimity,—laughable with satirical archness, as well as grand and terrible in the climax. The transformation in Spenser is from a jealous man into Jealousy. His wife has gone to live with the Satyrs, and a villain has stolen his money. The husband, in order to persuade his wife to return, steals into the horde of the Satyrs, by mixing with their flock of goats,—as Norandino does in a passage imitated from Homer by Ariosto. The wife flatly refuses to do any such thing, and the poor wretch is obliged to steal out again.

"So soon as he the prison door did pass, He ran as fast as both his feet could bear, And never looked who behind him was, Nor scarcely who before. Like as a bear That creeping close among the hives, to rear An honeycomb, the wakeful dogs espy, And him assailing, sore his carcass tear, That hardly he away with life does fly, Nor stays till safe himself he see from jeopardy.

Nor stay'd he till be came unto the place Where late his treasure he entombèd had; Where, when he found it not (for Trompart base Had it purloined for his master bad), With extreme fury he became quite mad, And ran away—ran with himself away; That who so strangely had him seen bestad, With upstart hair and staring eyes' dismay, From Limbo-lake him late escapèd sure would say.

High over hills and over dales he fled, As if the wind him on his wings had borne; Nor bank nor bush could stay him, when he sped His nimble feet, as treading still on thorn; Grief, and Despite, and Jealousy, and Scorn, Did all the way him follow hard behind; And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn, So shamefully forlorn of womankind, That, as a snake, still lurkèd in his wounded mind.

Still fled he forward, looking backward still; Nor stay'd his flight nor fearful agony Till that he came unto a rocky hill Over the sea suspended dreadfully, That living creature it would terrify To look a-down, or upward to the height From thence he threw himself dispiteously, All desperate of his fore-damnèd spright, That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight.

But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought, He was so wasted and forpinèd quite, That all his substance was consumed to nought, And nothing left but like an airy sprite; That on the rocks he fell so flit and light, That he thereby received no hurt at all; But chancèd on a craggy cliff to light; Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl, That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.

Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there Resolved to build his baleful mansion, In dreary darkness, and continual fear Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon, That he dare never sleep, but that one eye Still ope he keeps for that occasion; Nor ever rests he in tranquillity, The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.

Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous, Which in his cold complexion do breed A filthy blood, or humour rancorous, Matter of doubt and dread suspicious, That doth with cureless care consume the heart, Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious, Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart, And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.

Yet can he never die, but dying lives, And doth himself with sorrow new sustain, That death and life at once unto him gives, And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain; There dwells he ever, miserable swain, Hateful both to himself and every wight; Where he, through privy grief and horror vain, Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight."

Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's; but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.

[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the Furioso, but in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name of the Five Cantos. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious one, especially as it seems to have been written after the Furioso; for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,—a whale inhabited by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.

Did Ariosto, by the way, omit Macchiavelli in his list of the friends who hailed the close of his great poem, from not knowing what to make of his book entitled the Prince? It has perplexed all the world to this day, and is not unlikely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's.]

[Footnote 2: A tremendous fancy this last!

"Sta for la pena, de la qual dicea Che nacque quando la brutt'Ira nacque, La Crudeltade, e la Rapina rea; E quantunque in un ventre con for giacque, Di tormentarle mai non rimanea."]

ISABELLA.[1]

Rodomont, King of Algiers, was the fiercest of all the enemies of Christendom, not out of love for his own faith (for he had no piety), but out of hatred to those that opposed him. He had now quarrelled, however, with his friends too. He had been rejected by a lady, in favour of the Tartar king, Mandricardo, and mortified by the publicity of the rejection before his own lord paramount, Agramante, the leader of the infidel armies. He could not bear the rejection; he could not bear the sanction of it by his liege lord; he resolved to quit the scene of warfare and return to Africa; and, in the course of his journey thither, he had come into the south of France, where, observing a sequestered spot that suited his humour, be changed his mind as to going home, and persuaded himself he could live in it for the rest of his life. He accordingly took up his abode with his attendants in a chapel, which had been deserted by its clergy during the rage of war.

This vehement personage was standing one morning at the door of the chapel in a state of unusual thoughtfulness, when he beheld coming towards him, through a path in the green meadow before it, a lady of a lovely aspect, accompanied by a bearded monk. They were followed by something covered with black, which they were bringing along on a great horse.

Alas! the lady was the widow of Zerbino, the Scottish prince, who spared the life of Medoro, and who now himself lay dead under that pall. He had expired in her arms from wounds inflicted during a combat with Mandricardo; and she had been thrown by the loss into such anguish of mind that she would have died on his sword but for the intervention of the hermit now with her, who persuaded her to devote the rest of her days to God in a nunnery. She had now come into Provence with the good man for that purpose, and to bury the corpse of her husband in the chapel which they were approaching.

Though the lady seemed lost in grief, and was very pale, and had her hair all about the ears, and though she did nothing but weep and lament, and looked in all respects quite borne down with her misery, nevertheless she was still so beautiful that love and grace appeared to be indestructible in her aspect. The moment the Saracen beheld her, he dismissed from his mind all the determinations he had made to hate and detest

The gentle bevy, that adorns the world.

He was bent solely on obtaining the new angel before him. She seemed precisely the sort of person to make him forget the one that had rejected him. Advancing, therefore, to meet her without delay, he begged, in as gentle a manner as he could assume, to know the cause of her sorrow.

The lady, with all the candour of wretchedness, explained who she was, and how precious a burden she was conveying to its last home, and the resolution she had taken to withdraw from a vain world into the service of God. The proud pagan, who had no belief in a God, much less any respect for restraints or fidelities of what kind soever, forgot his assumed gravity when he heard this determination, and laughed outright at the simplicity of such a proceeding. He pronounced it, in his peremptory way, to be foolish and frivolous; compared it with the miser who, in burying a treasure, does good neither to himself nor any one else; and said, that lions and serpents might indeed be shut up in cages, but not things lovely and innocent.

The monk, overhearing these observations, thought it his duty to interfere. He calmly opposed all which the other asserted, and then proceeded to set forth a repast of spiritual consolation not at all to the Saracen's taste. The fierce warrior interrupted the preacher several times; told him that he had nothing to do with the lady, and that the sooner he returned to his cell the better; but the hermit, nothing daunted, went on with his advice till his antagonist lost all patience. He laid hands on his sacred person; seized him by the beard; tore away as much of it as he grasped; and at length worked himself up into such a pitch of fury, that he griped the good man's throat with all the force of a pair of pincers, and, swinging him twice or thrice round, as one might a dog, flung him off the headland into the sea.

What became of the poor creature I cannot say. Reports are various. Some tell us that he was found on the rocks, dashed all to pieces, so that you could not distinguish foot from head; others, that he fell into the sea at the distance of three miles, and perished in consequence of not knowing how to swim, in spite of the prayers and tears that he addressed to Heaven; others again affirm, that a saint came and assisted him, and drew him to shore before people's eyes. I must leave the reader to adopt which of these accounts he looks upon as the most probable.

The Pagan, as soon as he had thus disposed of the garrulous hermit, turned towards Isabella (for that was the lady's name), and with a face some what less disturbed, began to talk to her in the common language of gallantry, protesting that she was his life and soul, and that he should not know what to do without her; for the sweetness of her appearance mollified even him; and indeed, with all his violence, he would rather have possessed her by fair means than by foul. He therefore flattered himself that, by a little hypocritical attention, he should dispose her to return his inclinations.

On the other hand, the poor disconsolate creature, who, in a country unknown to her, and a place so remote from help, felt like a mouse in the cat's claws, began casting in her mind by what possible contrivance she could escape from such a wretch with honour. She had made up her mind to perish by her own hand, rather than be faithless, however unwillingly, to the dear husband that had died in her arms: but the question was, how she could protect herself from the pagan's violence, before she had secured the means of so doing; for his manner was becoming very impatient, and his speeches every moment less and less civil.

At length an expedient occurred to her. She told him, that if he would promise to respect her virtue, she would put him in possession of a secret that would redound far more to his honour and glory, than any wrong which he could inflict on the innocent. She conjured him not to throw away the satisfaction he would experience all the rest of his life from the consciousness of having done right, for the sake of injuring one unhappy creature. "There were thousands of her sex," she observed, "with cheerful as well as beautiful faces, who might rejoice in his affection; whereas the secret she spoke of was known to scarcely a soul on earth but herself."

She then told him the secret; which consisted in the preparation of a certain herb boiled with ivy and rue over a fire of cypress-wood, and squeezed into a cup by hands that had never done harm. The juice thus obtained, if applied fresh every month, had the virtue of rendering bodies invulnerable. Isabella said she had seen the herb in the neighbourhood, as she came along, and that she would not only make the preparation forth-with, but let its effects be proved on her own person. She only stipulated, that the receiver of the gift should swear not to offend her purity in deed or word.

The fierce infidel took the oath immediately. It delighted him to think that he should be enabled to have his fill of war and slaughter for nothing; and the oath was the more easy to him, inasmuch as he had no intention of keeping it.

The poor Isabella went into the fields to look for her miraculous herb, still, however, attended by the Saracen, who would not let her go out of his sight. She soon found it; and then going with him into his house, passed the rest of the day and the whole night in preparing the mixture with busy solemnity,—Rodomont always remaining with her.

The room became so hot and close with the fire of cypress-wood, that the Saracen, contrary to his law and indeed to his habits, indulged himself in drinking; and the consequence was, that, as soon as it was morning, Isabella lost no time in proving to him the success of her operations. "Now," she said, "you shall be convinced how much in earnest I have been. You shall see all the virtue of this blessed preparation. I have only to bathe myself thus, over the head and neck, and if you then strike me with all your force, as though you intended to cut off my head,—which you must do in good earnest,—you will see the wonderful result."

With a glad and rejoicing countenance the paragon of virtue held forth her neck to the sword; and the bestial pagan, giving way to his natural violence, and heated perhaps beyond all thought of a suspicion with his wine, dealt it so fierce a blow, that the head leaped from the shoulders.

Thrice it bounded on the ground where it fell, and a clear voice was heard to come out of it, calling the name of "Zerbino," doubtless in joy of the rare way which its owner had found of escaping from the Saracen.

O blessed soul, that heldest thy virtue and thy fidelity dearer to thee than life and youth! go in peace, then soul blessed and beautiful. If any words of mine could have force in them sufficient to endure so long, hard would I labour to give them all the worthiness that art can bestow, so that the world might rejoice in thy name for thousands and thousands of years. Go in peace, and take thy seat in the skies, and be an example to womankind of faith beyond all weakness.

[Footnote 1: The ingenious martyrdom in this story, which has been told by other writers of fiction, is taken from an alleged fact related in Barbaro's treatise De Re Uxoria.It is said, indeed, to have been actually resorted to more than once; and possibly may have been so, even from a knowledge of it; for what is more natural with heroical minds than that the like outrages should produce the like virtues? But the colouring of Ariosto's narration is peculiarly his own; and his apostrophe at the close beautiful.]