"If you have any armour that would suit my companion," replied Orlando, "that I will accept with pleasure."
"Come and see," said the abbot; and they went to a room that was full of armour. Morgante looked all about, but could find nothing large enough, except a rusty breast-plate, which fitted him marvellously. It had belonged to an enormous giant, who was killed there of old by Orlando's father, Milo of Angrante. There was a painting on the wall which told the whole story: how the giant had laid cruel and long siege to the abbey; and how he had been overthrown at last by the great Milo. Orlando seeing this, said within himself: "O God, unto whom all things are known, how came Milo here, who destroyed this giant?" And reading certain inscriptions which were there, he could no longer keep a firm countenance, but the tears ran down his cheeks.
When the abbot saw Orlando weep, and his brow redden, and the light of his eyes become child-like for sweetness, he asked him the reason; but, finding him still dumb with emotion, he said, "I do not know whether you are overpowered by admiration of what is painted in this chamber. You must know that I am of high descent, though not through lawful wedlock. I believe I may say I am nephew or sister's son to no less a man than that Rinaldo, who was so great a Paladin in the world, though my own father was not of a lawful mother. Ansuigi was his name; my own, out in the world, was Chiaramonte; and this Milo was my father's brother. Ah, gentle baron, for blessed Jesus' sake, tell me what name is yours!"
Orlando, all glowing with affection, and bathed in tears, replied, "My dear abbot and cousin, he before you is your Orlando." Upon this, they ran for tenderness into each other's arms, weeping on both sides with a sovereign affection, too high to be expressed. The abbot was so over-joyed, that he seemed as if he would never have done embracing Orlando. "By what fortune," said the knight, "do I find you in this obscure place? Tell me, my dear abbot, how was it you became a monk, and did not follow arms, like myself and the rest of us?"
"It is the will of God," replied the abbot, hastening to give his feelings utterance. "Many and divers are the paths he points out for us by which to arrive at his city; some walk it with the sword—some with pastoral staff. Nature makes the inclination different, and therefore there are different ways for us to take: enough if we all arrive safely at one and the same place, the last as well as the first. We are all pilgrims through many kingdoms. We all wish to go to Rome, Orlando; but we go picking out our journey through different roads. Such is the trouble in body and soul brought upon us by that sin of the old apple. Day and night am I here with my book in hand—day and night do you ride about, holding your sword, and sweating oft both in sun and shadow; and all to get round at last to the home from which we departed—I say, all out of anxiety and hope to get back to our home of old." And the giant hearing them talk of these things, shed tears also.
The Paladin and the giant quitted the abbey, the one on horseback and the other on foot, and journeyed through the desert till they came to a magnificent castle, the door of which stood open. They entered, and found rooms furnished in the most splendid manner—beds covered with cloth of gold, and floors rejoicing in variegated marbles. There was even a feast prepared in the saloon, but nobody to eat it, or to speak to them.
Orlando suspected some trap, and did not quite like it; but Morgante thought nothing worth considering but the feast. "Who cares for the host," said he, "when there's such a dinner? Let us eat as much as we can, and bear off the rest. I always do that when I have the picking of castles."
They accordingly sat down, and being very hungry with their day's journey, devoured heaps of the good things before them, eating with all the vigour of health, and drinking to a pitch of weakness.[3] They sat late in this manner enjoying themselves, and then retired for the night into rich beds.
But what was their astonishment in the morning at finding that they could not get out of the place! There was no door. All the entrances had vanished, even to any feasible window.
"We must be dreaming," said Orlando.
"My dinner was no dream, I'll swear," said the giant. "As for the rest, let it be a dream if it pleases."
Continuing to search up and down, they at length found a vault with a tomb in it; and out of the tomb came a voice, saying, "You must encounter with me, or stay here for ever. Lift, therefore, the stone that covers me."
"Do you hear that?" said Morgante; "I'll have him out, if it's the devil himself. Perhaps it's two devils, Filthy-dog and Foul-mouth, or Itching and Evil-tail."[4]
"Have him out," said Orlando, "whoever he is, even were it as many devils as were rained out of heaven into the centre."
Morgante lifted up the stone, and out leaped, surely enough, a devil in the likeness of a dried-up dead body, black as a coal. Orlando seized him, and the devil grappled with Orlando. Morgante was for joining him, but the Paladin bade him keep back. It was a hard struggle, and the devil grinned and laughed, till the giant, who was a master of wrestling, could bear it no longer: so he doubled him up, and, in spite of all his efforts, thrust him back into the tomb.
"You'll never get out," said the devil, "if you leave me shut up."
"Why not?" inquired the Paladin.
"Because your giant's baptism and my deliverance must go together," answered the devil. "If he is not baptised, you can have no deliverance; and if I am not delivered, I can prevent it still, take my word for it."
Orlando baptised the giant. The two companions then issued forth, and hearing a mighty noise in the house, looked back, and saw it all vanished.
"I could find it in my heart," said Morgante, "to go down to those same regions below, and make all the devils disappear in like manner. Why shouldn't we do it? We'd set free all the poor souls there. Egad, I'd cut off Minos's tail—I'd pull out Charon's beard by the roots—make a sop of Phlegyas, and a sup of Phlegethon—unseat Pluto,—kill Cerberus and the Furies with a punch of the face a-piece—and set Beelzebub scampering like a dromedary."
"You might find more trouble than you wot of," quoth Orlando, "and get worsted besides. Better keep the straight path, than thrust your head into out-of-the-way places."
Morgante took his lord's advice, and went straightforward with him through many great adventures, helping him with loving good-will as often as he was permitted, sometimes as his pioneer, and sometimes as his finisher of troublesome work, such as a slaughter of some thousands of infidels. Now he chucked a spy into a river—now felled a rude ambassador to the earth (for he didn't stand upon ceremony)—now cleared a space round him in battle with the clapper of an old bell which he had found at the monastery—now doubled up a king in his tent, and bore him away, tent and all, and a Paladin with him, because he would not let the Paladin go.
In the course of these services, the giant was left to take care of a lady, and lost his master for a time; but the office being at an end, he set out to rejoin him, and, arriving at a cross-road, met with a very extraordinary personage.
This was a giant huger than himself, swarthy-faced, horrible, brutish. He came out of a wood, and appeared to be journeying somewhere. Morgante, who had the great bell-clapper in his hand above-mentioned, struck it on the ground with astonishment, as much as to say, "Who the devil is this?" and then set himself on a stone by the way-side to observe the creature.
"What's your name, traveller?" said Morgante, as it came up.
"My name's Margutte," said the phenomenon. "I intended to be a giant myself, but altered my mind, you see, and stopped half-way; so that I am only twenty feet or so."
"I'm glad to see you," quoth his brother-giant. "But tell me, are youChristian or Saracen? Do you believe in Christ or inApollo?"
"To tell you the truth," said the other, "I believe neither in black nor blue, but in a good capon, whether it be roast or boiled. I believe sometimes also in butter, and, when I can get it, in new wine, particularly the rough sort; but, above all, I believe in wine that's good and old. Mahomet's prohibition of it is all moonshine. I am the son, you must know, of a Greek nun and a Turkish bishop; and the first thing I learned was to play the fiddle. I used to sing Homer to it. I was then concerned in a brawl in a mosque, in which the old bishop somehow happened to be killed; so I tied a sword to my side, and went to seek my fortune, accompanied by all the possible sins of Turk and Greek. People talk of the seven deadly sins; but I have seventy-seven that never quit me, summer or winter; by which you may judge of the amount of my venial ones. I am a gambler, a cheat, a ruffian, a highwayman, a pick-pocket, a glutton (at beef or blows); have no shame whatever; love to let every body know what I can do; lie, besides, about what I can't do; have a particular attachment to sacrilege; swallow perjuries like figs; never give a farthing to any body, but beg of every body, and abuse them into the bargain; look upon not spilling a drop of liquor as the chief of all the cardinal virtues; but must own I am not much given to assassination, murder being inconvenient; and one thing I am bound to acknowledge, which is, that I never betrayed a messmate."
"That's as well," observed Morgante; "because you see, as you don't believe in any thing else, I'd have you believe in this bell-clapper of mine. So now, as you have been candid with me, and I am well instructed in your ways, we'll pursue our journey together."
The best of giants, in those days, were not scrupulous in their modes of living; so that one of the best and one of the worst got on pretty well together, emptying the larders on the road, and paying nothing but douses on the chops. When they could find no inn, they hunted elephants and crocodiles. Morgante, who was the braver of the two, delighted to banter, and sometimes to cheat, Margutte; and he ate up all the fare; which made the other, notwithstanding the credit he gave himself for readiness of wit and tongue, cut a very sorry figure, and seriously remonstrate: "I reverence you," said Margutte, "in other matters; but in eating, you really don't behave well. He who deprives me of my share at meals is no friend; at every mouthful of which he robs me, I seem to lose an eye. I'm for sharing every thing to a nicety, even if it be no better than a fig."
"You are a fine fellow," said Morgante; "you gain upon me very much. You are 'the master of those who know.'"[6]
So saying, he made him put some wood on the fire, and perform a hundred other offices to render every thing snug; and then he slept: and next day he cheated his great scoundrelly companion at drink, as he had done the day before at meat; and the poor shabby devil complained; and Morgante laughed till he was ready to burst, and again and again always cheated him.
There was a levity, nevertheless, in Margutte, which restored his spirits on the slightest glimpse of good fortune; and if he realised a hearty meal, he became the happiest, beastliest, and most confident of giants. The companions, in the course of their journey, delivered a damsel from the clutches of three other giants. She was the daughter of a great lord; and when she got home, she did honour to Morgante as to an equal, and put Margutte into the kitchen, where he was in a state of bliss. He did nothing but swill, stuff, surfeit, be sick, play at dice, cheat, filch, go to sleep, guzzle again, laugh, chatter, and tell a thousand lies.
Morgante took leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents. Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and impudent, daubed his face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in his hand, demanded "something for the cook." The fair hostess gave him a jewel; and the vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had disgraced him for ever.
"Softly!" said the brute-beast. "Didn't you take me with you, knowing what sort of fellow I was? Didn't I tell you I had every sin and shame under heaven; and have I deceived you by the exhibition of a single virtue?"
Morgante could not help laughing at a candour of this excessive nature. So they went on their way till they came to a wood, where they rested themselves by a fountain, and Margutte fell fast asleep. He had a pair of boots on, which Morgante felt tempted to draw off, that he might see what he would do on waking. He accordingly did so, and threw them to a little distance among the bushes. The sleeper awoke in good time, and, looking and searching round about, suddenly burst into roars of laughter. A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off, making the most ridiculous gestures. The monkey busied himself, and the light-minded drunkard laughed; and at every fresh gesticulation of the new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at length it was found impossible to be restrained. The glutton had a laughing-fit. In vain he tried to stop himself; in vain his fingers would have loosened the buttons of his doublet, to give his lungs room to play. They couldn't do it; so he laughed and roared till he burst. The snap was like the splitting of a cannon. Morgante ran up to him, but it was of no use. He was dead.
Alas! it was not the only death; it was not even the most trivial cause of a death. Giants are big fellows, but Death's a bigger, though he may come in a little shape. Morgante had succeeded in joining his master. He helped him to take Babylon; he killed a whale for him at sea that obstructed his passage; he played the part of a main-sail during a storm, holding out his arms and a great hide; but on coming to shore, a crab bit him in the heel; and behold the lot of the great giant—he died! He laughed, and thought it a very little thing, but it proved a mighty one.
"He made the East tremble," said Orlando; "and the bite of a crab has slain him!"
O life of ours, weak, and a fallacy![7]
Orlando embalmed his huge friend, and had him taken to Babylon, and honourably interred; and, after many an adventure, in which he regretted him, his own days were closed by a far baser, though not so petty a cause.
How shall I speak of it? exclaims the poet. How think of the horrible slaughter about to fall on the Christians and their greatest men, so that not a dry eye shall be left in France? How express my disgust at the traitor Gan, whose heart a thousand pardons from his sovereign, and the most undeserved rescues of him by the warrior he betrayed, could not shame or soften? How mourn the weakness of Charles, always deceived by him, and always trusting? How dare to present to my mind the good, the great, the ever-generous Orlando, brought by the traitor into the doleful pass of Roncesvalles and the hands of myriads of his enemies, so that even his superhuman strength availed not to deliver him out of the slaughterhouse, and he blew the blast with his dying breath, which was the mightiest, the farthest heard, and the most melancholy sound that ever came to the ears of the undeceived?
Gan was known well to every body but his confiding sovereign. The Paladins knew him well; and in their moments of indignant disgust often told him so, though they spared him the consequences of his misdeeds, and even incurred the most frightful perils to deliver him out of the hands of his enemies. But he was brave; he was in favour with the sovereign, who was also their kinsman; and they were loyal and loving men, and knew that the wretch envied them for the greatness of their achievements, and might do the state a mischief; so they allowed themselves to take a kind of scornful pleasure in putting up with him. Their cousin Malagigi, the enchanter, had himself assisted Gan, though he knew him best of all, and had prophesied that the innumerable endeavours of his envy to destroy his king and country would bring some terrible evil at last to all Chistendom. The evil, alas! is at hand. The doleful time has come. It will be followed, it is true, by a worse fate of the wretch himself; but not till the valleys of the Pyrenees have run rivers of blood, and all France is in mourning.
[Footnote 1: A common pleasantry in the old romances—"Galaor went in, and then the halberders attacked him on one side, and the knight on the other. He snatched an axe from one, and turned to the knight and smote him, so that he had no need of a surgeon."—Southey'sAmadis of Gaul, vol. i. p. 146.]
[Footnote 2:
"Sonsi i nostri dottori accordati,Pigliando tutti una conclusione,Che que' che son nel ciel glorificati,S' avessin nel pensier compassioneDe' miseri parenti che dannatiSon ne lo inferno in gran confusione,La lor felicità nulla sarebbeE vedi the qui ingiusto Iddio parebbe.
Ma egli anno posto in Gesù ferma spene;E tanto pare a lor, quanto a lui pare:Afferman cio ch' e' fu, che facci bene,E che non possi in nessun modo errare:Se padre o madre è ne l'eterne pene,Di questo non si posson conturbare:Che quel che piace a Dio, sol piace a loroQuesto s'osserva ne l'eterno core.
Al savio suol bastar poche parole,Disse Morgante: tu il potrai vedere,De' miei fratelli, Orlando, se mi duole,E s'io m'accordero di Dio al volere,Come tu di che in ciel servar si suole:Morti co' morti; or pensiam di godere:Io vo' tagliar le mani a tutti quanti,E porterolle a que' monaci santi."
This doctrine, which is horrible blasphemy in the eyes of natural feeling, is good reasoning in Catholic and Calvinistic theology. They first make the Deity's actions a necessity from some barbarous assumption, then square them according to a dictum of the Councils, then compliment him by laying all that he has made good and kindly within us mangled and mad at his feet. Meantime they think themselves qualified to denounce Moloch and Jugghanaut!]
[Footnote 3:
"E furno al here infermi, al mangiar sani."
I am not sure that I am right in my construction of this passage. Perhaps Pulci means to say, that they had the appetites of men in health, and the thirst of a fever.]
[Footnote 5: Cagnazzo, Farfarello. Libicocco, and Malacoda; names of devils in Dante.]
[Footnote 6: "Il maestro di color che sanno." A jocose application ofDante's praise of Aristotle.]
[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace!"]
Notice.
This is the
"sad and fearful story Of the Roncesvalles fight;"
an event which national and religious exaggeration impressed deeply on the popular mind of Europe. Hence Italian romances and Spanish ballads: hence the famous passage in Milton,
"When Charlemain with all his peerage fellBy Fontarabbia:"
hence Dante's record of thedolorosa rotta(dolorous rout) in theInferno, where he compares the voice of Nimrod with the horn sounded by the dying Orlando: hence the peasant in Cervantes, who is met by Don Quixote singing the battle as he comes along the road in the morning: and hence the song of Roland actually thundered forth by the army of William the Conqueror as they advanced against the English.
But Charlemagne did not "fall," as Milton has stated. Nor does Pulci make him do so. In this respect, if in little else, the Italian poet adhered to the fact. The whole story is a remarkable instance of what can be done by poetry and popularity towards misrepresenting and aggrandising a petty though striking adventure. The simple fact was the cutting off the rear of Charlemagne's army by the revolted Gascons, as he returned from a successful expedition into Spain. Two or three only of his nobles perished, among whom was his nephew Roland, the obscure warden of his marches of Brittany. But Charlemagne was the temporal head of Christendom; the poets constituted his nephew its champion; and hence all the glories and superhuman exploits of the Orlando of Pulci and Ariosto. The whole assumption of the wickedness of the Saracens, particularly of the then Saracen king of Spain, whom Pulci's authority, the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, strangely called Marsilius, was nothing but a pious fraud; the pretended Marsilius having been no less a person than the great and good Abdoùlrahmaùn the First, who wrested the dominion of that country out of the hands of the usurpers of his family-rights. Yet so potent and long-lived are the most extravagant fictions, when genius has put its heart into them, that to this day we read of the devoted Orlando and his friends not only with gravity, but with the liveliest emotion.
A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses. Altogether impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, than melancholy; but though Gan will die at last, Orlando must die before him, and that makes a tragedy of all. I had a doubt whether, consistently with the truth, I could give the reader even that sorry satisfaction; for at the beginning of the dreadful battle, Orlando's cousin, Rinaldo, who is said to have joined it before it was over, and there, as well as afterwards, to have avenged his death, was far away from the seat of slaughter, in Egypt; and how was I to suppose that he could arrive soon enough in the valleys of the Pyrenees? But an angel upon earth shewed me the secret, even Angelo Poliziano, the glory of his age and country. He informed me how Arnauld, the Provençal poet, had written of this very matter, and brought the Paladin from Egypt to France by means of the wonderful skill in occult science possessed by his cousin Malagigi—a wonder to the ignorant, but not so marvellous to those who know that all the creation is full of wonders, and who have different modes of relating the same events. By and by, a great many things will be done in the world, of which we have no conception now, and people will be inclined to believe them works of the devil, when, in fact, they will be very good works, and contribute to angelical effects, whether the devil be forced to have a hand in them or not; for evil itself can work only in subordination to good. So listen when the astonishment comes, and reflect and think the best. Meantime, we must speak of another and more truly devilish astonishment, and of the pangs of mortal flesh and blood.
The traitor Gan, for the fiftieth time, had secretly brought the infidels from all quarters against his friend and master, the Emperor Charles; and Charles, by the help of Orlando, had conquered them all. The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court of France tribute; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited in this particular instance, and his known villany at all times, had succeeded in persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando. Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too; but the one was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes. The traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying him to write if he had any thing to say before the arrangements with Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his villany was manifest to every one but the old monarch. He fastened with equal tenderness on Uliviero, who smiled contemptuously in his face, and thought to himself, "You may make as many fair speeches as you choose, but you lie." All the other Paladins who were present thought the same and they said as much to the emperor; adding, that on no account should Gan be sent ambassador to Marsilius. But Charles was infatuated. His beard and his credulity had grown old together.
Gan was received with great honour in Spain by Marsilius. The king, attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Saragossa to meet him, and then conducted him into the city amid tumults of delight. There was nothing for several days but balls, and games, and exhibitions of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French knights, and the people shouting "France! France! Mountjoy and St. Denis!"
Gan made a speech, "like a Demosthenes," to King Marsilius in public; but he made him another in private, like nobody but himself. The king and he were sitting in a garden; they were traitors both, and began to understand, from one another's looks, that the real object of the ambassador was yet to be discussed. Marsilius accordingly assumed a more than usually cheerful and confidential aspect; and, taking his visitor by the hand, said, "You know the proverb, Mr. Ambassador—'At dawn, the mountain; afternoon, the fountain.' Different things at different hours. So here is a fountain to accommodate us."
It was a very beautiful fountain, so clear that you saw your face in it as in a mirror; and the spot was encircled with fruit-trees that quivered with the fresh air. Gan praised it very much, contriving to insinuate, on one subject, his satisfaction with the glimpses he got into another. Marsilius understood him; and as he resumed the conversation, and gradually encouraged a mutual disclosure of their thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was enabled to do so by contemplating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its expression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime, saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan. By degrees, he began to touch on that dissatisfaction with Charlemagne and his court, which he knew was in both their minds: he lamented, not as to the ambassador, but as to the friend, the injuries which he said he had received from Charles in the repeated attacks on his dominions, and the emperor's wish to crown Orlando king of them; till at length he plainly uttered his belief, that if that tremendous Paladin were but dead, good men would get their rights, and his visitor and himself have all things at their disposal.
Gan heaved a sigh, as if he was unwillingly compelled to allow the force of what the king said; but, unable to contain himself long, he lifted up his face, radiant with triumphant wickedness, and exclaimed, "Every word you utter is truth. Die he must; and die also must Uliviero, who struck me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like those? I have planned every thing—I have settled every thing already with their besotted master. Orlando could not be expected to be brought hither, where he has been accustomed to look for a crown; but he will come to the Spanish borders—to Roncesvalles—for the purpose of receiving the tribute. Charles will await him, at no great distance, in St. John Pied de Port. Orlando will bring but a small band with him; you, when you meet him, will have secretly your whole army at your back. You surround him; and who receives tribute then?"
The new Judas had scarcely uttered these words, when the delight of him and his associate was interrupted by a change in the face of nature. The sky was suddenly overcast; it thundered and lightened; a laurel was split in two from head to foot; the fountain ran into burning blood; there was an earthquake, and the carob-tree under which Gan was sitting, and which was of the species on which Judas Iscariot hung himself, dropped some of its fruit on his head. The hair of the head rose in horror.
Marsilius, as well as Gan, was appalled at this omen; but on assembling his soothsayers, they came to the conclusion that the laurel-tree turned the omen against the emperor, the successor of the Cæsars; though one of them renewed the consternation of Gan, by saying that he did not understand the meaning of the tree of Judas, and intimating that perhaps the ambassador could explain it. Gan relieved his consternation with anger; the habit of wickedness prevailed over all considerations; and the king prepared to march for Roncesvalles at the head of all his forces.
Gan wrote to Charlemagne, to say how humbly and properly Marsilius was coming to pay the tribute into the hands of Orlando, and how handsome it would be of the emperor to meet him halfway, as agreed upon, at St. John Pied de Port, and so be ready to receive him, after the payment, at his footstool. He added a brilliant account of the tribute and its accompanying presents. They included a crown in the shape of a garland which had a carbuncle in it that gave light in darkness; two lions of an "immeasurable length, and aspects that frightened every body;" some "lively buffalos," leopards, crocodiles, and giraffes; arms and armour of all sorts; and apes and monkeys seated among the rich merchandise that loaded the backs of the camels. This imaginary treasure contained, furthermore, two enchanted spirits, called "Floro and Faresse," who were confined in a mirror, and were to tell the emperor wonderful things, particularly Floro (for there is nothing so nice in its details as lying): and Orlando was to have heaps of caravans full of Eastern wealth, and a hundred white horses, all with saddles and bridles of gold. There was a beautiful vest, too, for Uliviero, all over jewels, worth ten thousand "seraffi," or more.
The good emperor wrote in turn to say how pleased he was with the ambassador's diligence, and that matters were arranged precisely as he wished. His court, however, had its suspicions still. Nobody could believe that Gan had not some new mischief in contemplation. Little, nevertheless, did they imagine, after the base endeavours he had but lately made against them, that he had immediately plotted a new and greater one, and that his object in bringing Charles into the neighbourhood of Roncesvalles was to deliver him more speedily into the hands of Marsilius, in the event of the latter's destruction of Orlando.
Orlando, however, did as his lord and sovereign desired. He went to Roncesvalles, accompanied by a moderate train of warriors, not dreaming of the atrocity that awaited him. Gan himself, meantime, had hastened on to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on the Paladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers. He had also, by Gan's advice, brought heaps of wine and good cheer to be set before his victims in the first instance; "for that," said the traitor, "will render the onset the more effective, the feasters being unarmed; and, supposing prodigies of valour to await even the attack of your second army, you will have no trouble with your third. One thing, however, I must not forget," added he; "my son Baldwin is sure to be with Orlando; you must take care of his life for my sake." "I give him this vest off my own body," said the king; "let him wear it in the battle, and have no fear. My soldiers shall be directed not to touch him."
Gan went away rejoicing to France. He embraced the court and his sovereign all round, with the air of a man who had brought them nothing but blessings; and the old king wept for very tenderness and delight.
"Something is going on wrong, and looks very black," thought Malagigi, the good wizard; "and Rinaldo is not here, and it is indispensably necessary that he should be. I must find out where he is, and Ricciardetto too, and send for them with all speed, and at any price." Malagigi called up, by his art, a wise, terrible, and cruel spirit, named Ashtaroth;—no light personage to deal with—no little spirit, such as plays tricks with you like a fairy. A much blacker visitant was this.
"Tell me, and tell me truly of Rinaldo," said Malagigi to the spirit.
Hard looked the demon at the Paladin, and said nothing. His aspect was clouded and violent. He wished to see whether his summoner retained all the force of his art.
The enchanter, with an aspect still cloudier, bade Ashtaroth lay down that look. While giving this order, he also made signs indicative of a disposition to resort to angrier compulsion; and the devil, apprehending that he would confine him in some hateful place, loosened his tongue, and said, "You have not told me what you desire to know of Rinaldo."
"I desire to know what he has been doing, and where he is," returned the enchanter.
"He has been conquering and baptising the world, east and west," said the demon, "and is now in Egypt with Ricciardetto."
"And what has Gan been plotting with Marsilius," inquired Malagigi, "and what is to come of it?"
"On neither of those points can I enlighten you," said the devil. "I was not attending to Gan at the time, and we fallen spirits know not the future. Had we done so, we had not been so willing to incur the danger of falling. All I discern is, that, by the signs and comets in the heavens, something dreadful is about to happen—something very strange, treacherous, and bloody; and that Gan has a seat ready prepared for him in hell."
"Within three days," cried the enchanter, loudly, "fetch Rinaldo and Ricciardetto into the pass of Roncesvalles. Do it, and I hereby undertake never to summon thee more."
"Suppose they will not trust themselves with me," said the spirit.
"Enter Rinaldo's horse, and bring him, whether he trust thee or not."
"It shall be done," returned the demon; "and my serving-devil Foul-Mouth, or Fire-Red, shall enter the horse of Ricciardetto. Doubt it not. Am I not wise, and thyself powerful?"
There was an earthquake, and Ashtaroth disappeared.
Marsilius has now made his first movement towards the destruction of Orlando, by sending before him his vassal-king Blanchardin with his presents of wines and other luxuries. The temperate but courteous hero took them in good part, and distributed them as the traitor wished; and then Blanchardin, on pretence of going forward to salute Charlemagne at St. John Pied de Port, returned and put himself at the head of the second army, which was the post assigned him by his liege lord. The device on his flag was an "Apollo" on a field azure. King Falseron, whose son Orlando had slain in battle, headed the first army, the device of which was a black figure of the devil Belphegor on a dapple-grey field. The third army was under King Balugante, and had for ensign a Mahomet with golden wings in a field of red. Marsilius made a speech to them at night, in which he confessed his ill faith, but defended it on the ground of Charles's hatred of their religion, and of the example of "Judith and Holofernes." He said, that he had not come there to pay tribute, and sell his countrymen for slaves, but to make all Christendom pay tribute to them as conquerors; and he concluded by recommending to their good-will the son of his friend Gan, whom they would know by the vest he had sent him, and who was the only soul among the Christians they were to spare.
This son of Gan, meantime, and several of the Paladins who were disgusted with Charles's credulity, and anxious at all events to be with Orlando, had joined the hero in the fated valley; so that the little Christian host, considering the tremendous valour of their lord and his friends, and the comparative inefficiency of that of the infidels, were at any rate not to be sold for nothing. Rinaldo, alas! the second thunderbolt of Christendom, was destined not to be there in time to save their lives. He could only avenge the dreadful tragedy, and prevent still worse consequences to the whole Christian court and empire. The Paladins had in vain begged Orlando to be on his guard against treachery, and send for a more numerous body of men. The great heart of the Champion of the Faith was unwilling to think the worst as long as he could help it. He refused to summon aid that might be superfluous; neither would he do any thing but what his liege lord had desired. And yet he could not wholly repress a misgiving. A shadow had fallen on his heart, great and cheerful as it was. The anticipations of his friends disturbed him, in spite of the face with which he met them. I am not sure that he did not, by a certain instinctive foresight, expect death itself; but he felt bound not to encourage the impression. Besides, time pressed; the moment of the looked-for tribute was at hand; and little combinations of circumstances determine often the greatest events.
King Blanchardin had brought Orlando's people a luxurious supper; King Marsilius was to arrive early next day with the tribute; and Uliviero accordingly, with the morning sun, rode forth to reconnoitre, and see if he could discover the peaceful pomp of the Spanish court in the distance. Guottibuoffi was with him, a warrior who had expected the very worst, and repeatedly implored Orlando to believe it possible. Uliviero and he rode up the mountain nearest them, and from the top of it beheld the first army of Marsilius already forming in the passes.
"O Guottibuoffi!" exclaimed he, "behold thy prophecies come true! behold the last day of the glory of Charles! Every where I see the arms of the traitors around us. I feel Paris tremble all the way through France, to the ground beneath my feet. O Malagigi, too much in the right wert thou! O devil Gan, this then is the consummation of thy good offices!"
Uliviero put spurs to his horse, and galloped back down the mountain toOrlando.
"Well," cried the hero, "what news?"
"Bad news," said his cousin; "such as you would not hear of yesterday.Marsilius is here in arms, and all the world has come with him."
The Paladins pressed round Orlando, and entreated him to sound his horn, in token that he needed help. His only answer was, to mount his horse, and ride up the mountain with Sansonetto.
As soon, however, as he cast forth his eyes and beheld what was round about him, he turned in sorrow, and looked down into Roncesvalles, and said, "O valley, miserable indeed! the blood that is shed in thee this day will colour thy name for ever."
Many of the Paladins had ridden after him, and they again pressed him to sound his horn, if only in pity to his own people. He said, "If Cæsar and Alexander were here, Scipio and Hannibal, and Nebuchadnezzar with all his flags, and Death stared me in the face with his knife in his hand, never would I sound my horn for the baseness of fear."
Orlando's little camp were furious against the Saracens. They armed themselves with the greatest impatience. There was nothing but lacing of helmets and mounting of horses; and good Archbishop Turpin went from rank to rank, exhorting and encouraging the warriors of Christ. Accoutrements and habiliments were put on the wrong way; words and deeds mixed in confusion; men running against one another out of very absorption in themselves; all the place full of cries of "Arm! arm! the enemy!" and the trumpets clanged over all against the mountain-echoes.
Orlando and his captains withdrew for a moment to consultation. He fairly groaned for sorrow, and at first had not a word to say; so wretched he felt at having brought his people to die in Roncesvalles.
Uliviero spoke first. He could not resist the opportunity of comforting himself a little in his despair, with referring to his unheeded advice.
"You see, cousin," said he, "what has come at last. Would to God you had attended to what I said; to what Malagigi said; to what we all said! I told you Marsilius was nothing but an anointed scoundrel. Yet forsooth, he was to bring us tribute! and Charles is this moment expecting his mummeries at St. John Pied de Port! Did ever any body believe a word that Gan said, but Charles? And now you see this rotten fruit has come to a head;—this medlar has got its crown."
Orlando said nothing in answer to Uliviero; for in truth he had nothing to say. He broke away to give orders to the camp; bade them take refreshment; and then addressing both officers and men, he said, "I confess, that if it had entered my heart to conceive the king of Spain to be such a villain, never would you have seen this day. He has exchanged with me a thousand courtesies and good words; and I thought that the worse enemies we had been before, the better friends we had become now. I fancied every human being capable of this kind of virtue on a good opportunity, saving, indeed, such base-hearted wretches as can never forgive their very forgivers; and of these I certainly did not suppose him to be one. Let us die, if we must die, like honest and gallant men; so that it shall be said of us, it was only our bodies that died. It becomes our souls to be invincible, and our glory immortal. Our motto must be, 'A good heart and no hope.' The reason why I did not sound the horn was, partly because I thought it did not become us, and partly because our liege lord could be of little use, even if he heard it. Let Gan have his glut of us like a carrion crow; but let him find us under heaps of his Saracens, an example for all time. Heaven, my friends, is with us, if earth is against us. Methinks I see it open this moment, ready to receive our souls amidst crowns of glory; and therefore, as the champion of God's church, I give you my benediction; and the good archbishop here will absolve you; and so, please God, we shall all go to Heaven and be happy."
And with these words Orlando sprang to his horse, crying, "Away against the Saracens!" but he had no sooner turned his face than he wept bitterly, and said, "O holy Virgin, think not of me, the sinner Orlando, but have pity on these thy servants."
Archbishop Turpin did as Orlando said, giving the whole band his benediction at once, and absolving them from their sins, so that every body took comfort in the thought of dying for Christ, and thus they embraced one another, weeping; and then lance was put to thigh, and the banner was raised that was won in the jousting at Aspramont.
And now with a mighty dust, and an infinite sound of horns, and tambours, and trumpets, which came filling the valley, the first army of the infidels made its appearance, horses neighing, and a thousand pennons flying in the air. King Falseron led them on, saying to his officers, "Now, gentlemen, recollect what I said. The first battle is for the leaders only;—and, above all, let nobody dare to lay a finger on Orlando. He belongs to myself. The revenge of my son's death is mine. I will cut the man down that comes between us."
"Now, friends," said Orlando, "every man for himself, and St. Michael for us all. There is no one here that is not a perfect knight."
And he might well say it; for the flower of all France was there, except Rinaldo and Ricciardetto; every man a picked man; all friends and constant companions of Orlando. There was Richard of Normandy, and Guottibuoffi, and Uliviero, and Count Anselm, and Avolio, and Avino, and the gentle Berlinghieri, and his brother, and Sansonetto, and the good Duke Egibard, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Angiolin of Bayona, and all the other Paladins of France, excepting those two whom I have mentioned. And so the captains of the little troop and of the great array sat looking at one another, and singling one another out, as the latter came on; and then either side began raising their war-cries, and the mob of the infidels halted, and the knights put spear in rest, and ran for a while, two and two in succession, each one against the other.
Astolfo was the first to move. He ran against Arlotto of Soria; and Angiolin then ran against Malducco; and Mazzarigi the Renegade came against Avino; and Uliviero was borne forth by his horse Rondel, who couldn't stand still, against Malprimo, the first of the captains of Falseron.
And now lances began to be painted red, without any brush but themselves; and the new colour extended itself to the bucklers, and the cuishes, and the cuirasses, and the trappings of the steeds.
Astolfo thrust his antagonist's body out of the saddle, and his soul into the other world; and Angiolin gave and took a terrible blow with Malducco; but his horse bore him onward; and Avino had something of the like encounter with Mazzarigi; but Uliviero, though he received a thrust which hurt him, sent his lance right through the heart of Malprimo.
Falseron was daunted at this blow. "Verily," thought he, "this is a miracle." Uliviero did not press on among the Saracens, his wound was too painful; but Orlando now put himself and his whole band into motion, and you may guess what an uproar ensued. The sound of the rattling of the blows and helmets was as if the forge of Vulcan had been thrown open. Falseron beheld Orlando coming so furiously, that he thought him a Lucifer who had burst his chain, and was quite of another mind than when he proposed to have him all to himself. On the contrary, he recommended himself to his gods; and turning away, begged for a more auspicious season of revenge. But Orlando hailed and arrested him with a terrible voice, saying, "O thou traitor! Was this the end to which old quarrels were made up? Dost thou not blush, thou and thy fellow-traitor Marsilius, to have kissed me on the cheek like a Judas, when last thou wert in France?"
Orlando had never shewn such anger in his countenance as he did that day. He dashed at Falseron with a fury so swift, and at the same time a mastery of his lance so marvellous, that though he plunged it in the man's body so as instantly to kill him, the body did not move in the saddle. The hero himself, as he rushed onwards, was fain to see the end of a stroke so perfect, and, turning his horse back, he touched the carcass with his sword, and it fell on the instant. They say, that it had no sooner fallen than it disappeared. People got off their horses to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being left; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found as empty as the shell that is cast by a lobster. O new, and strange, and portentous event!—proof manifest of the anger with which God regards treachery.
When the first infidel army beheld their leader dead, such fear fell upon them, that they were for leaving the field to the Paladins; but they were unable. Marsilius had drawn the rest of his forces round the valley like a net, so that their shoulders were turned in vain. Orlando rode into the thick of them, with Count Anselm by his side. He rushed like a tempest; and wherever he went, thunderbolts fell upon helmets. The Paladins drove here and there after them, each making a whirlwind round about him, and a bloody circle. Uliviero was again in themêlée; and Walter of Amulion threw himself into it; and Baldwin roared like a lion; and Avino and Avolio reaped the wretches' heads like a turnip-field; and blows blinded men's eyes; and Archbishop Turpin himself had changed his crozier for a lance, and chased a new flock before him to the mountains.
Yet what could be done against foes without number? Multitudes fill up the spaces left by the dead without stopping. Marsilius, from his anxious and raging post, constantly pours them in. The Paladins are as units to thousands. Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto?
The horses did not tarry; but fate had been quicker than enchantment. Ashtaroth, nevertheless, had presented himself to Rinaldo in Egypt, as though he had issued out of a flash of lightning. After telling his mission, and giving orders to hundreds of invisible spirits round about him (for the air was full of them), he and Foul-Mouth, his servant, entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh and snort and leap with the fiends within them, till off they flew through the air over the pyramids, crowds of spirits going like a tempest before them. Ricciardetto shut his eyes at first, on perceiving himself so high in the air; but he speedily became used to it, though he looked down on the sun at last. In this manner they passed the desert, and the sea-coast, and the ocean, and swept the tops of the Pyrenees, Ashtaroth talking to them of wonders by the way; for he was one of the wisest of the devils, and knew a great many things which were then unknown to man. He laughed, for instance, as they went over sea, at the notion, among other vain fancies, that nothing was to be found beyond the pillars of Hercules; "for," said he, "the earth is round, and the sea has an even surface all over it; and there are nations on the other side of the globe, who walk with their feet opposed to yours, and worship other gods than the Christians."
"Hah!" said Rinaldo; "and may I ask whether they can be saved?"
"It is a bold thing to ask," said the devil; "but do you take the Redeemer for a partisan, and fancy he died for you only? Be assured he died for the whole world, Antipodes and all. Perhaps not one soul will be left out the pale of salvation at last, but the whole human race adore the truth, and find mercy. The Christian is the only true religion; but Heaven loves all goodness that believes honestly, whatsoever the belief may be."
Rinaldo was mightily taken with the humanity of the devil's opinions: but they were now approaching the end of their journey, and began to hear the noise of the battle; and he could no longer think of any thing but the delight of being near Orlando, and plunging into the middle of it.
"You shall be in the very heart of it instantly," said his bearer. "I love you, and would fain do all you desire. Do not fancy that all nobleness of spirit is lost among us people below. You know what the proverb says, 'There's never a fruit, however degenerate, but will taste of its stock.' I was of a different order of beings once, and—But it is as well not to talk of happy times. Yonder is Marsilius; and there goes Orlando. Farewell, and give me a place in your memory."
Rinaldo could not find words to express his sense of the devil's good-will, nor of that of Foul Mouth himself. He said: "Ashtaroth, I am as sorry to part with you as if you were a brother; and I certainly do believe that nobleness of spirit exists, as you say, among your people below. I shall be glad to see you both sometimes, if you can come; and I pray God (if my poor prayer be worth any thing) that you may all repent, and obtain his pardon; for without repentance, you know, nothing can be done for you."
"If I might suggest a favour," returned Ashtaroth, "since you are so good as to wish to do me one, persuade Malagigi to free me from his service, and I am yours for ever. To serve you will be a pleasure to me. You will only have to say, 'Ashtaroth,' and my good friend here will be with you in an instant."
"I am obliged to you," cried Rinaldo, "and so is my brother. I will write Malagigi, not merely a letter, but a whole packet-full of your praises; and so I will to Orlando; and you shall be set free, depend on it, your company has been so perfectly agreeable."
"Your humble servant," said Ashtaroth, and vanished with his companion like lightning.
But they did not go far.
There was a little chapel by the road-side in Roncesvalles, which had a couple of bells; and on the top of that chapel did the devils place themselves, in order that they might catch the souls of the infidels as they died, and so carry them off to the infernal regions. Guess if their wings had plenty to do that day! Guess if Minos and Rhadamanthus were busy, and Charon sung in his boat, and Lucifer hugged himself for joy. Guess, also, if the tables in heaven groaned with nectar and ambrosia, and good old St. Peter had a dry hair in his beard.
The two Paladins, on their horses, dropped right into the middle of the Saracens, and began making such havoc about them, that Marsilius, who overlooked the fight from a mountain, thought his soldiers had turned one against the other. He therefore descended in fury with his third army; and Rinaldo, seeing him coming, said to Ricciardetto, "We had better be off here, and join Orlando;" and with these words, he gave his horse one turn round before he retreated, so as to enable his sword to make a bloody circle about him; and stories say, that he sheared off twenty heads in the whirl of it. He then dashed through the astonished beholders towards the battle of Orlando, who guessed it could be no other than his cousin, and almost dropped from his horse, out of desire to meet him. Ricciardetto followed Rinaldo; and Uliviero coming up at the same moment, the rapture of the whole party is not to be expressed. They almost died for joy. After a thousand embraces, and questions, and explanations, and expressions of astonishment (for the infidels held aloof awhile, to take breath from the horror and mischief they had undergone), Orlando refreshed his little band of heroes, and then drew Rinaldo apart, and said, "O my brother, I feel such delight at seeing you, I can hardly persuade myself I am not dreaming. Heaven be praised for it. I have no other wish on earth, now that I see you before I die. Why didn't you write? But never mind. Here you are, and I shall not die for nothing."
"I did write," said Rinaldo, "and so did Ricciardetto; but villany intercepted our letters. Tell me what to do, my dear cousin; for time presses, and all the world is upon us."
"Gan has brought us here," said Orlando, "under pretence of receiving tribute from Marsilius—you see of what sort; and Charles, poor old man, is waiting to receive his homage at the town of St. John! I have never seen a lucky day since you left us. I believe I have done for Charles more than in duty bound, and that my sins pursue me, and I and mine must all perish in Roncesvalles."
"Look to Marsilius," exclaimed Rinaldo; "he is right upon us."
Marsilius was upon them, surely enough, at once furious and frightened at the coming of the new Paladins; for his camp, numerous as it was, had not only held aloof, but turned about to fly like herds before the lion; so he was forced to drive them back, and bring up his other troops, reasonably thinking that such numbers must overwhelm at last, if they could but be kept together.
Not the less, however, for this, did the Paladins continue to fight as if with joy. They killed and trampled wheresoever they went; Rinaldo fatiguing himself with sending infinite numbers of souls to Ashtaroth, and Orlando making a bloody passage towards Marsilius, whom he hoped to settle as he had done Falseron.
In the course of this his tremendous progress, the hero struck a youth on the head, whose helmet was so good as to resist the blow, but at the same time flew off; and Orlando seized him by the hair to kill him. "Hold!" cried the youth, as loud as want of breath could let him; "you loved my father—I'm Bujaforte."
The Paladin had never seen Bujaforte; but he saw the likeness to the good old Man of the Mountain, his father; and he let go the youth's hair, and embraced and kissed him. "O Bujaforte!" said he; "I loved him indeed my good old man; but what does his son do here, fighting against his friend?"
Bujaforte was a long time before he could speak for weeping. At length he said, "Orlando, let not your noble heart be pained with ill thoughts of my father's son. I am forced to be here by my lord and master Marsilius. I had no friend left me in the world, and he took me into his court, and has brought me here before I knew what it was for; and I have made a shew of fighting, but have not hurt a single Christian. Treachery is on every side of you. Baldwin himself has a vest given him by Marsilius, that every body may know the son of his friend Gan, and do him no injury. See there—look how the lances avoid him."
"Put your helmet on again," said Orlando, "and behave just as you have done. Never will your father's friend be an enemy to the son. Only take care not to come across Rinaldo."
The hero then turned in fury to look for Baldwin, who was hastening towards him at that moment with friendliness in his looks.
"'Tis strange," said Baldwin; "I have done my duty as well as I could, yet no body will come against me. I have slain right and left, and cannot comprehend what it is that makes the stoutest infidels avoid me."
"Take off your vest," cried Orlando, contemptuously, "and you will soon discover the secret, if you wish to know it. Your father has sold us to Marsilius, all but his honourable son."
"If my father," cried Baldwin, impetuously tearing off the vest, "has been such a villain, and I escape dying any longer, by God! I will plunge this sword through his heart. But I am no traitor, Orlando; and you do me wrong to say it. You do me foul dishonour, and I'll not survive it. Never more shall you behold me alive."
Baldwin spurred off into the fight, not waiting to hear another word from Orlando, but constantly crying out, "You have done me dishonour;" and Orlando was very sorry for what he had said, for he perceived that the youth was in despair.
And now the fight raged beyond all it had done before; and the Paladins themselves began to fall, the enemy were driven forward in such multitudes by Marsilius. There was unhorsing of foes, and re-seating of friends, and great cries, and anguish, and unceasing labour; and twenty Pagans went down for one Christian; but still the Christians fell. One Paladin disappeared after another, having too much to do for mortal men. Some could not make way through the press for very fatigue of killing, and others were hampered with the falling horses and men. Sansonetto was thus beaten to earth by the club of Grandonio; and Walter d'Amulion had his shoulders broken; and Angiolin of Bayona, having lost his lance, was thrust down by Marsilius, and Angiolin of Bellonda by Sirionne; and Berlinghieri and Ottone are gone; and then Astolfo went, in revenge of whose death Orlando turned the spot on which he died into a gulf of Saracen blood. Rinaldo met the luckless Bujaforte, who had just begun to explain how he seemed to be fighting on the side which his father hated, when the impatient hero exclaimed, "He who is not with me is against me;" and gave him a volley of such horrible cuffs about the head and ears, that Bujaforte died without being able to speak another word. Orlando, cutting his way to a spot in which there was a great struggle and uproar, found the poor youth Baldwin, the son of Gan, with two spears in his breast. "I am no traitor now," said Baldwin; and so saying, fell dead to the earth; and Orlando lifted up his voice and wept, for he was bitterly sorry to have been the cause of his death. He then joined Rinaldo in the hottest of the tumult; and all the surviving Paladins gathered about them, including Turpin the archbishop, who fought as hardily as the rest; and the slaughter was lavish and horrible, so that the eddies of the wind chucked the blood into the air, and earth appeared a very seething-cauldron of hell. At length down went Uliviero himself. He had become blind with his own blood, and smitten Orlando without knowing him, who had never received such a blow in his life.
"How now, cousin!" cried Orlando; "have you too gone over to the enemy?"
"O, my lord and master, Orlando," cried the other, "I ask your pardon, if I have struck you. I can see nothing—I am dying. The traitor Arcaliffe has stabbed me in the back; but I killed him for it. If you love me, lead my horse into the thick of them, so that I may not die unavenged."
"I shall die myself before long," said Orlando, "out of very toil and grief; so we will go together. I have lost all hope, all pride, all wish to live any longer; but not my love for Uliviero. Come—let us give them a few blows yet; let them see what you can do with your dying hands. One faith, one death, one only wish be ours."
Orlando led his cousin's horse where the press was thickest, and dreadful was the strength of the dying man and of his half-dying companion. They made a street, through which they passed out of the battle; and Orlando led his cousin away to his tent, and said, "Wait a little till I return, for I will go and sound the horn on the hill yonder."
"'Tis of no use," said Uliviero; "and my spirit is fast going, and desires to be with its Lord and Saviour." He would have said more, but his words came from him imperfectly, like those of a man in a dream; only his cousin gathered that he meant to commend to him his sister, Orlando's wife, Alda the Fair, of whom indeed the great Paladin had not thought so much in this world as he might have done. And with these imperfect words he expired.
But Orlando no sooner saw him dead, than he felt as if he was left alone on the earth; and he was quite willing to leave it; only he wished that Charles at St. John Pied de Port should hear how the case stood before he went; and so he took up the horn, and blew it three times with such force that the blood burst out of his nose and mouth. Turpin says, that at the third blast the horn broke in two.
In spite of all the noise of the battle, the sound of the horn broke over it like a voice out of the other world. They say that birds fell dead at it, and that the whole Saracen army drew back in terror. But fearfuller still was its effect at St. John Pied de Port. Charlemagne was sitting in the midst of his court when the sound reached him; and Gan was there. The emperor was the first to hear it.
"Do you hear that?" said he to his nobles. "Did you hear the horn, as I heard it?"
Upon this they all listened; and Gan felt his heart misgive him.
The horn sounded the second time.
"What is the meaning of this?" said Charles.
"Orlando is hunting," observed Gan, "and the stag is killed. He is at the old pastime that he was so fond of in Aspramonte."
But when the horn sounded yet a third time, and the blast was one of so dreadful a vehemence, every body looked at the other, and then they all looked at Gan in fury. Charles rose from his seat. "This is no hunting of the stag," said he. "The sound goes to my very heart, and, I confess, makes me tremble. I am awakened out of a great dream. O Gan! O Gan! Not for thee do I blush, but for myself, and for nobody else. O my God, what is to be done! But whatever is to be done, must be done quickly. Take this villain, gentlemen, and keep him in hard prison. O foul and monstrous villain! Would to God I had not lived to see this day! O obstinate and enormous folly! O Malagigi, had I but believed thy foresight! 'Tis thou went the wise man, and I the grey-headed fool."
Ogier the Dane, and Namo and others, in the bitterness of their grief and anger, could not help reminding the emperor of all which they had foretold. But it was no time for words. They put the traitor into prison; and then Charles, with all his court, took his way to Roncesvalles, grieving and praying.
It was afternoon when the horn sounded, and half an hour after it when the emperor set out; and meantime Orlando had returned to the fight that he might do his duty, however hopeless, as long as he could sit his horse, and the Paladins were now reduced to four; and though the Saracens suffered themselves to be mowed down like grass by them and their little band, he found his end approaching for toil and fever, and so at length he withdrew out of the fight, and rode all alone to a fountain which he knew of, where he had before quenched his thirst.
His horse was wearier still than he, and no sooner had its master alighted, than the beast, kneeling down as if to take leave, and to say, "I have brought you to your place of rest," fell dead at his feet. Orlando cast water on him from the fountain, not wishing to believe him dead; but when he found it to no purpose, he grieved for him as if he had been a human being, and addressed him by name in tears, and asked forgiveness if ever he had done him wrong. They say, that the horse at these words once more opened his eyes a little, and looked kindly at his master, and so stirred never more.
They say also that Orlando then, summoning all his strength, smote a rock near him with his beautiful sword Durlindana, thinking to shiver the steel in pieces, and so prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy; but though the rock split like a slate, and a deep fissure remained ever after to astonish the eyes of pilgrims, the sword remained unhurt.
"O strong Durlindana," cried he, "O noble and worthy sword, had I known thee from the first, as I know thee now, never would I have been brought to this pass."
And now Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and Turpin came up, having given chase to the Saracens till they were weary, and Orlando gave joyful welcome to his cousin, and they told him how the battle was won, and then Orlando knelt before Turpin, his face all in tears, and begged remission of his sins and confessed them, and Turpin gave him absolution; and suddenly a light came down upon him from heaven like a rainbow, accompanied with a sound of music, and an angel stood in the air blessing him, and then disappeared; upon which Orlando fixed his eyes on the hilt of his sword as on a crucifix, and embraced it, and said, "Lord, vouchsafe that I may look on this poor instrument as on the symbol of the tree upon which Thou sufferedst thy unspeakable martyrdom!" and so adjusting the sword to his bosom, and embracing it closer, he raised his eyes, and appeared like a creature seraphical and transfigured; and in bowing his head he breathed out his pure soul. A thunder was then heard in the heavens, and the heavens opened and seemed to stoop to the earth, and a flock of angels was seen like a white cloud ascending with his spirit, who were known to be what they were by the trembling of their wings. The white cloud shot out golden fires, so that the whole air was full of them; and the voices of the angels mingled in song with the instruments of their brethren above, which made an inexpressible harmony, at once deep and dulcet. The priestly warrior Turpin, and the two Paladins, and the hero's squire Terigi, who were all on their knees, forgot their own beings, in following the miracle with their eyes.
It was now the office of that squire to take horse and ride off to the emperor at Saint John Pied de Port, and tell him of all that had occurred; but in spite of what he had just seen, he lay for a time overwhelmed with grief. He then rose, and mounted his steed, and left the Paladins and the archbishop with the dead body, who knelt about it, guarding it with weeping love.
The good squire Terigi met the emperor and his cavalcade coming towards Roncesvalles, and alighted and fell on his knees, telling him the miserable news, and how all his people were slain but two of his Paladins, and himself, and the good archbishop. Charles for anguish began tearing his white locks; but Terigi comforted him against so doing, by giving an account of the manner of Orlando's death, and how he had surely gone to heaven. Nevertheless, the squire himself was broken-hearted with grief and toil; and he had scarcely added a denouncement of the traitor Gan, and a hope that the emperor would appease Heaven finally by giving his body to the winds, than he said, "The cold of death is upon me;" and so he fell dead at the emperor's feet.
Charles was ready to drop from his saddle for wretchedness. He cried out, "Let nobody comfort me more. I will have no comfort. Cursed be Gan, and cursed this horrible day, and this place, and every thing. Let us go on, like blind miserable men that we are, into Roncesvalles; and have patience if we can, out of pure misery, like Job, till we do all that can be done."
So Charles rode on with his nobles; and they say, that for the sake of the champion of Christendom and the martyrs that died with him, the sun stood still in the sky till the emperor had seen Orlando, and till the dead were buried.
Horrible to his eyes was the sight of the field of Roncesvalles. The Saracens, indeed, had forsaken it, conquered; but all his Paladins but two were left on it dead, and the slaughtered heaps among which they lay made the whole valley like a great dumb slaughter-house, trampled up into blood and dirt, and reeking to the heat. The very trees were dropping with blood; and every thing, so to speak, seemed tired out, and gone to a horrible sleep.
Charles trembled to his heart's core for wonder and agony. After dumbly gazing on the place, he again cursed it with a solemn curse, and wished that never grass might grow within it again, nor seed of any kind, neither within it, nor on any of its mountains around with their proud shoulders; but the anger of Heaven abide over it for ever, as on a pit made by hell upon earth.
Then he rode on, and came up to where the body of Orlando awaited him with the Paladins, and the old man, weeping, threw himself as if he had been a reckless youth from his horse, and embraced and kissed the dead body, and said, "I bless thee, Orlando. I bless thy whole life, and all that thou wast, and all that thou ever didst, and thy mighty and holy valour, and the father that begot thee; and I ask pardon of thee for believing those who brought thee to thine end. They shall have their reward, O thou beloved one! But, indeed, it is thou that livest, and I that am worse than dead."
And now, behold a wonder. For the emperor, in the fervour of his heart and of the memory of what had passed between them, called to mind that Orlando had promised to give him his sword, should he die before him; and he lifted up his voice more bravely, and adjured him even now to return it to him gladly; and it pleased God that the dead body of Orlando should rise on its feet, and kneel as he was wont to do at the feet of his liege lord, and gladly, and with a smile on its face, return the sword to the Emperor Charles. As Orlando rose, the Paladins and Turpin knelt down out of fear and horror, especially seeing him look with a stern countenance; but when they saw that he knelt also, and smiled, and returned the sword, their hearts became re-assured, and Charles took the sword like his liege lord, though trembling with wonder and affection: and in truth he could hardly clench his fingers around it.
Orlando was buried in a great sepulchre in Aquisgrana, and the dead Paladins were all embalmed and sent with majestic cavalcades to their respective counties and principalities, and every Christian was honourably and reverently put in the earth, and recorded among the martyrs of the Church.
But meantime the flying Saracens, thinking to bury their own dead, and ignorant of what still awaited them, came back into the valley, and Rinaldo beheld them with a dreadful joy, and shewed them to Charles. Now the emperor's cavalcade had increased every moment; and they fell upon the Saracens with a new and unexpected battle, and the old emperor, addressing the sword of Orlando, exclaimed, "My strength is little, but do thou do thy duty to thy master, thou famous sword, seeing that he returned it to me smiling, and that his revenge is in my hands." And so saying, he met Balugante, the leader of the infidels, as he came borne along by his frightened horse; and the old man, raising the sword with both hands, cleaved him, with a delighted mind, to the chin.