The snap was like the
splitting
of a cannon.
Stories from the Italian Poets
His wife, Alda the Fair, hastened to
embrace him; but while she was saying, "Welcome, my Orlando," he was
going to strike her with his sword, for his head was bewildered, and he
took her for the traitor. The fair Alda marvelled greatly, but Orlando
recollected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped from
his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested himself with her
for some days.
He then took his leave, being still carried away by his disdain, and
resolved to pass over into Heathendom; and as he rode, he thought, every
step of the way, of the traitor Gan; and so, riding on wherever the road
took him, he reached the confines between the Christian countries and
the Pagan, and came upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert.
Now above the abbey was a great mountain, inhabited by three fierce
giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, another Alabastro, and the
third Morgante; and these giants used to disturb the abbey by throwing
things down upon it from the mountain with slings, so that the poor
little monks could not go out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked,
but nobody would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot
came himself, and opening the door bade him welcome. The good man told
him the reason of the delay, and said that since the arrival of the
giants they had been so perplexed that they did not know what to do.
"Our ancient fathers in the desert," quoth he, "were rewarded according
to their holiness. It is not to be supposed that they lived only upon
locusts; doubtless, it also rained manna upon them from heaven; but
here one is regaled with stones, which the giants pour on us from the
mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest of the
three, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great trees by the roots, and
casts them on us. " While they were talking thus in the cemetery, there
came a stone which seemed as if it would break Rondel's back.
"For God's sake, cavalier," said the abbot, "come in, for the manna is
falling. "
"My dear abbot," answered Orlando, "this fellow, methinks, does not wish
to let my horse feed; he wants to cure him of being restive; the stone
seems as if it came from a good arm. " "Yes," replied the holy father,
"I did not deceive you. I think, some day or other, they will cast the
mountain itself on us. "
Orlando quieted his horse, and then sat down to a meal; after which he
said, "Abbot, I must go and return the present that has been made to my
horse. " The abbot with great tenderness endeavoured to dissuade him, but
in vain; upon which he crossed him on the forehead, and said, "Go, then;
and the blessing of God be with you. "
Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing
him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would
stay with him for a page, promising to make him comfortable. "Stupid
Saracen," said Orlando, "I come to you, according to the will of God, to
be your death, and not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants
here, and are no longer to be endured, dog that you are! "
The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to his weapons;
and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, which struck him
on the head with such force, as not only made his helmet ring again, but
felled him to the earth. Passamonte thought he was dead. "What could
have brought that paltry fellow here? " said he, as he turned away. But
Christ never forsakes his followers. While Passamonte was going away,
Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, "How now, giant? do you fancy you
have killed me? Turn back, for unless you have wings, your escape is
out of the question, dog of a renegade! " The giant, greatly marvelling,
turned back; and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cortana
naked in his hand, cleft his skull; upon which, cursing Mahomet, the
monster tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blaspheming fell
the sour-hearted and cruel wretch; but Orlando, in the mean while,
thanked the Father and the Word.
The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant; who, when
he saw him, endeavoured to pluck up a great piece of stony earth by the
roots. "Ho, ho! " cried Orlando, "you too are for throwing stones,
are you? " Then Alabastro took his sling, and flung at him so large a
fragment as forced Orlando to defend himself, for if it had struck him,
he would no more have needed a surgeon;[1] but collecting his strength,
he thrust his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell
dead.
"Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, "for I have always heard you
called a perfect knight; and as I said, I will follow you all my life
long. "
And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey; and by the way
Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort
him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our
Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we
must submit to the will of God. The doctors of our Church," continued
he, "are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in heaven were to
feel pity for their miserable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion
in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing; and this, you see, would
plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of their
faith, that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do what he
may, they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible for him to
err; so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering everlasting
punishment, it does not disturb them an atom. This is the custom, I
assure you, in the choirs above. "[2]
"A word to the wise," said Morgante; "you shall see if I grieve for my
brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God, and behave
myself like an angel. So dust to dust; and now let us enjoy ourselves. I
will cut off their hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy
monks, that they may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out
alone into the desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has
purified me, and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom
of heaven. " So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, and
left their bodies to the beasts and birds.
They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Orlando in great
anxiety; but the monks not knowing what had happened, ran to the abbot
in great haste and alarm, saying, "Will you suffer this giant to come
in? " And when the abbot saw the giant, he changed countenance. Orlando,
perceiving him thus disturbed, made haste and said, "Abbot, peace be
with you! The giant is a Christian; he believes in Christ, and has
renounced his false prophet, Mahomet. " And Morgante shewing the hands in
proof of his faith, the abbot thanked Heaven with great contentment of
mind.
The abbot did much honour to Morgante, comparing him with St. Paul; and
they rested there many days. One day, wandering over the house, they
entered a room where the abbot kept a quantity of armour; and Morgante
saw a bow which pleased him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in
the place a great scarcity of water; and Orlando said, like his good
brother, "Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water. " "Command me
as you please," said he; and placing a great tub on his shoulders, he
went towards a spring at which he had been accustomed to drink, at the
foot of the mountain. Having reached the spring, he suddenly heard a
great noise in the forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it
in the bow, and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing
towards the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean
through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in revenge, ran
towards the giant, without giving him time to use a second arrow; so he
lent him a cuff on the head which broke the bone, and killed him also;
which stroke the rest seeing fled in haste through the valley. Morgante
then placed the tub full of water upon one of his shoulders, and the
two porkers on the other, and returned to the abbey which was at some
distance, without spilling a drop.
The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still more the
pork; for there is no animal to whom food comes amiss. They let their
breviaries therefore go to sleep a while, and fell heartily to work, so
that the cats and dogs had reason to lament the polish of the bones.
"But why do we stay here doing nothing? " said Orlando one day to
Morgante; and he shook hands with the abbot, and told him he must take
his leave. "I must go," said he, "and make up for lost time. I ought to
have gone long ago, my good father; but I cannot tell you what I feel
within me, at the content I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall
bear in mind and in heart with me for ever the abbot, the abbey, and
this desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a
time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for me, in his
own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do not forget us in your
prayers. "
When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, his heart melted
within him for tenderness, and he said, "Knight, if we have failed in
any courtesy due to your prowess and great gentleness (and indeed what
we have done has been but little), pray put it to the account of our
ignorance, and of the place which we inhabit. We are but poor men of
the cloister, better able to regale you with masses and orisons and
paternosters, than with dinners and suppers. You have so taken this
heart of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I
shall be with you still wherever you go; and, on the other hand, you
will always be present here with me. This seems a contradiction; but you
are wise, and will take my meaning discreetly. You have saved the very
life and spirit within us; for so much perplexity had those giants cast
about our place, that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May
He who sent you into these woods reward the justice and piety by which
we are delivered from our trouble. Thanks be to him and to you. We shall
all be disconsolate at your departure. We shall grieve that we cannot
detain you among us for months and years; but you do not wear these
weeds; you bear arms and armour; and you may possibly merit as well in
carrying those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your
virtue has been the means of shewing the giant the way to heaven. Go in
peace then, and prosper, whoever you may be. I do not seek your name;
but if ever I am asked who it was that came among us, I shall say that
it was an angel from God. If there is any armour or other thing that you
would have, go into the room where it is, and take it. "
"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 you
Christian or Saracen? Do you believe in Christ or in _Apollo_? "
"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's _Amadis 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 compassione
De' miseri parenti che dannati
Son ne lo inferno in gran confusione,
La lor felicità nulla sarebbe
E 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 loro
Questo 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 of
Dante's praise of Aristotle. ]
[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace! "]
THE
BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
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 fell
By Fontarabbia:"
hence Dante's record of the _dolorosa rotta_ (dolorous rout) in the
_Inferno_, 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.
THE
BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
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 to
Orlando.
"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.
embrace him; but while she was saying, "Welcome, my Orlando," he was
going to strike her with his sword, for his head was bewildered, and he
took her for the traitor. The fair Alda marvelled greatly, but Orlando
recollected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped from
his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested himself with her
for some days.
He then took his leave, being still carried away by his disdain, and
resolved to pass over into Heathendom; and as he rode, he thought, every
step of the way, of the traitor Gan; and so, riding on wherever the road
took him, he reached the confines between the Christian countries and
the Pagan, and came upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert.
Now above the abbey was a great mountain, inhabited by three fierce
giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, another Alabastro, and the
third Morgante; and these giants used to disturb the abbey by throwing
things down upon it from the mountain with slings, so that the poor
little monks could not go out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked,
but nobody would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot
came himself, and opening the door bade him welcome. The good man told
him the reason of the delay, and said that since the arrival of the
giants they had been so perplexed that they did not know what to do.
"Our ancient fathers in the desert," quoth he, "were rewarded according
to their holiness. It is not to be supposed that they lived only upon
locusts; doubtless, it also rained manna upon them from heaven; but
here one is regaled with stones, which the giants pour on us from the
mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest of the
three, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great trees by the roots, and
casts them on us. " While they were talking thus in the cemetery, there
came a stone which seemed as if it would break Rondel's back.
"For God's sake, cavalier," said the abbot, "come in, for the manna is
falling. "
"My dear abbot," answered Orlando, "this fellow, methinks, does not wish
to let my horse feed; he wants to cure him of being restive; the stone
seems as if it came from a good arm. " "Yes," replied the holy father,
"I did not deceive you. I think, some day or other, they will cast the
mountain itself on us. "
Orlando quieted his horse, and then sat down to a meal; after which he
said, "Abbot, I must go and return the present that has been made to my
horse. " The abbot with great tenderness endeavoured to dissuade him, but
in vain; upon which he crossed him on the forehead, and said, "Go, then;
and the blessing of God be with you. "
Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing
him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would
stay with him for a page, promising to make him comfortable. "Stupid
Saracen," said Orlando, "I come to you, according to the will of God, to
be your death, and not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants
here, and are no longer to be endured, dog that you are! "
The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to his weapons;
and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, which struck him
on the head with such force, as not only made his helmet ring again, but
felled him to the earth. Passamonte thought he was dead. "What could
have brought that paltry fellow here? " said he, as he turned away. But
Christ never forsakes his followers. While Passamonte was going away,
Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, "How now, giant? do you fancy you
have killed me? Turn back, for unless you have wings, your escape is
out of the question, dog of a renegade! " The giant, greatly marvelling,
turned back; and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cortana
naked in his hand, cleft his skull; upon which, cursing Mahomet, the
monster tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blaspheming fell
the sour-hearted and cruel wretch; but Orlando, in the mean while,
thanked the Father and the Word.
The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant; who, when
he saw him, endeavoured to pluck up a great piece of stony earth by the
roots. "Ho, ho! " cried Orlando, "you too are for throwing stones,
are you? " Then Alabastro took his sling, and flung at him so large a
fragment as forced Orlando to defend himself, for if it had struck him,
he would no more have needed a surgeon;[1] but collecting his strength,
he thrust his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell
dead.
"Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, "for I have always heard you
called a perfect knight; and as I said, I will follow you all my life
long. "
And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey; and by the way
Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort
him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our
Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we
must submit to the will of God. The doctors of our Church," continued
he, "are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in heaven were to
feel pity for their miserable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion
in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing; and this, you see, would
plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of their
faith, that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do what he
may, they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible for him to
err; so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering everlasting
punishment, it does not disturb them an atom. This is the custom, I
assure you, in the choirs above. "[2]
"A word to the wise," said Morgante; "you shall see if I grieve for my
brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God, and behave
myself like an angel. So dust to dust; and now let us enjoy ourselves. I
will cut off their hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy
monks, that they may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out
alone into the desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has
purified me, and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom
of heaven. " So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, and
left their bodies to the beasts and birds.
They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Orlando in great
anxiety; but the monks not knowing what had happened, ran to the abbot
in great haste and alarm, saying, "Will you suffer this giant to come
in? " And when the abbot saw the giant, he changed countenance. Orlando,
perceiving him thus disturbed, made haste and said, "Abbot, peace be
with you! The giant is a Christian; he believes in Christ, and has
renounced his false prophet, Mahomet. " And Morgante shewing the hands in
proof of his faith, the abbot thanked Heaven with great contentment of
mind.
The abbot did much honour to Morgante, comparing him with St. Paul; and
they rested there many days. One day, wandering over the house, they
entered a room where the abbot kept a quantity of armour; and Morgante
saw a bow which pleased him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in
the place a great scarcity of water; and Orlando said, like his good
brother, "Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water. " "Command me
as you please," said he; and placing a great tub on his shoulders, he
went towards a spring at which he had been accustomed to drink, at the
foot of the mountain. Having reached the spring, he suddenly heard a
great noise in the forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it
in the bow, and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing
towards the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean
through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in revenge, ran
towards the giant, without giving him time to use a second arrow; so he
lent him a cuff on the head which broke the bone, and killed him also;
which stroke the rest seeing fled in haste through the valley. Morgante
then placed the tub full of water upon one of his shoulders, and the
two porkers on the other, and returned to the abbey which was at some
distance, without spilling a drop.
The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still more the
pork; for there is no animal to whom food comes amiss. They let their
breviaries therefore go to sleep a while, and fell heartily to work, so
that the cats and dogs had reason to lament the polish of the bones.
"But why do we stay here doing nothing? " said Orlando one day to
Morgante; and he shook hands with the abbot, and told him he must take
his leave. "I must go," said he, "and make up for lost time. I ought to
have gone long ago, my good father; but I cannot tell you what I feel
within me, at the content I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall
bear in mind and in heart with me for ever the abbot, the abbey, and
this desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a
time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for me, in his
own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do not forget us in your
prayers. "
When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, his heart melted
within him for tenderness, and he said, "Knight, if we have failed in
any courtesy due to your prowess and great gentleness (and indeed what
we have done has been but little), pray put it to the account of our
ignorance, and of the place which we inhabit. We are but poor men of
the cloister, better able to regale you with masses and orisons and
paternosters, than with dinners and suppers. You have so taken this
heart of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I
shall be with you still wherever you go; and, on the other hand, you
will always be present here with me. This seems a contradiction; but you
are wise, and will take my meaning discreetly. You have saved the very
life and spirit within us; for so much perplexity had those giants cast
about our place, that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May
He who sent you into these woods reward the justice and piety by which
we are delivered from our trouble. Thanks be to him and to you. We shall
all be disconsolate at your departure. We shall grieve that we cannot
detain you among us for months and years; but you do not wear these
weeds; you bear arms and armour; and you may possibly merit as well in
carrying those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your
virtue has been the means of shewing the giant the way to heaven. Go in
peace then, and prosper, whoever you may be. I do not seek your name;
but if ever I am asked who it was that came among us, I shall say that
it was an angel from God. If there is any armour or other thing that you
would have, go into the room where it is, and take it. "
"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 you
Christian or Saracen? Do you believe in Christ or in _Apollo_? "
"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's _Amadis 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 compassione
De' miseri parenti che dannati
Son ne lo inferno in gran confusione,
La lor felicità nulla sarebbe
E 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 loro
Questo 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 of
Dante's praise of Aristotle. ]
[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace! "]
THE
BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
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 fell
By Fontarabbia:"
hence Dante's record of the _dolorosa rotta_ (dolorous rout) in the
_Inferno_, 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.
THE
BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
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 to
Orlando.
"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.
