Oh, mind of ours,
inordinate
and
proud!
proud!
Stories from the Italian Poets
A certain horrible majesty augmented
the terrors of his aspect. His eyes reddened; his poisonous look hung in
the air like a comet; the mouth, as it opened in the midst of clouds of
beard, seemed an abyss of darkness and blood; and out of it, as from a
volcano, issued fires, and vapours, and disgust.
Satan laid forth to his dreadful hearers his old quarrel with Heaven,
and its new threats of an extension of its empire. Christendom was to be
brought into Asia; their worshippers were to perish; souls were to be
rescued from their devices, and Satan's kingdom on earth put an end to.
He exhorted them therefore to issue forth once for all and prevent this
fatal consummation by the destruction of the Christian forces. Some of
the leaders he bade them do their best to disperse, others to slay,
others to draw into effeminate pleasures, into rebellion, into the ruin
of the whole camp, so that not a vestige might remain of its existence.
The assembly broke up with the noise of hurricanes. They issued forth
to look once more upon the stars, and to sow seeds every where of
destruction to the Christians. Satan himself followed them, and entered
the heart of Hydraotes, king of Damascus.
Hydraotes was a wizard as well as a king, and held the Christians in
abhorrence. But he was wise enough to respect their valour; and with
Satan's help he discerned the likeliest way to counteract it. He had a
niece, who was the greatest beauty of the age. He had taught her his art:
and he concluded, that the enchantments of beauty and magic united would
prove irresistible. He therefore disclosed to her his object. He told her
that every artifice was lawful, when the intention was to serve one's
country and one's faith; and he conjured her to do her utmost to separate
Godfrey himself from his army, or in the event of that not being
possible, to bring away as many as she could of his noblest captains.
Armida (for that was her name), proud of her beauty, and of the unusual
arts that she had acquired, took her way the same evening, alone, and by
the most sequestered paths,--a female in gown and tresses issuing forth
to conquer an army. [2]
She had not travelled many days ere she came in sight of the Christian
camp, the outskirts of which she entered immediately. The Frenchmen all
flocked to see her, wondering who she was, and who could have sent them
so lovely a messenger. Armida passed onwards, not with a misgiving air,
not with an unalluring, and yet not with an immodest one. Her golden
tresses she suffered at one moment to escape from under her veil, and
at another she gathered them again within it. Her rosy mouth breathed
simplicity as well as voluptuousness. Her bosom was so artfully draped,
as to let itself be discerned without seeming to intend it. And thus she
passed along, surprising and transporting every body. Coming at length
among the tents of the officers, she requested to be shewn that of the
leader; and Eustace eagerly stepped forward to conduct her.
Eustace was the younger brother of Godfrey. He had all the ardour of his
time of life, and the gallantry, in every respect, of a Frenchman. After
paying her a profusion of compliments, and learning that she was a
fugitive in distress, he promised her every thing which his brother's
authority and his own sword could do for her; and so led her into
Godfrey's presence.
The pretended fugitive made a lowly obeisance, and then stood mute and
blushing, till the general re-assured her. She then told him, that she
was the rightful queen of Damascus, whose throne was usurped by an uncle;
that her uncle sought her death, from which she had been saved by the man
who was bribed to inflict it; and that although her creed was Mahometan,
she had brought her mind to conclude, that so noble an enemy as Godfrey
would take pity on her condition, and permit some of his captains to aid
the secret wishes of her people, and seat her on the throne. Ten selected
chiefs would overcome, she said, all opposition; and she promised in
return to become his grateful and faithful vassal.
The leader of the Christian army sat a while in deliberation. His heart
was inclined to befriend the lady, but his prudence was afraid of a Pagan
artifice. He thought also that it did not become his piety to turn aside
from the enterprise which God had favoured. He therefore gave her a
gentle refusal; but added, that should success attend him, and Jerusalem
be taken, he would instantly do what she required.
Armida looked down, and wept. A mixture of indignation and despair
appeared to seize her; and exclaiming that she had no longer a wish to
live, she accused, she said, not a heart so renowned for generosity as
his, but Heaven itself which had steeled it against her. What was she to
do? She could not remain in his camp. Virgin modesty forbade that. She
was not safe out of its bounds. Her enemies tracked her steps. It was fit
that she should die by her own hand.
An indignant pity took possession of the French officers. They wondered
how Godfrey could resist the prayers of a creature so beautiful; and
Eustace openly, though respectfully, remonstrated. He said, that if ten
of the best of his captains could not be spared, ten others might;
that it especially became the Christians to redress the wrongs of the
innocent; that the death of a tyrant, instead of being a deviation from
the service of God, was one of the directest means of performing it; and
that France would never endure to hear, that a lady had applied to her
knights for assistance, and found her suit refused.
A murmur of approbation followed the words of Eustace. His companions
pressed nearer to the general, and warmly urged his request.
Godfrey assented to a wish expressed by so many, but not with perfect
goodwill. He bade them remember, that the measure was the result of their
own opinion, not his; and concluded by requesting them at all events, for
his sake, to moderate the excess of their confidence. The transported
warriors had scarcely any answer to make but that of congratulations to
the lady. She, on her side, while mischief was rejoicing in her heart,
first expressed her gratitude to all in words intermixed with smiles and
tears, and then carried herself towards every one in particular in the
manner which she thought most fitted to ensnare. She behaved to this
person with cordiality, to that with comparative reserve; to one with
phrases only, to another with looks besides, and intimations of secret
preference. The ardour of some she repressed, but still in a manner to
rekindle it. To others she was all gaiety and attraction; and when others
again had their eyes upon her, she would fall into fits of absence, and
shed tears, as if in secret, and then look up suddenly and laugh, and put
on a cheerful patience. And thus she drew them all into her net.
Yet none of all these men confessed that passion impelled them; every
body laid his enthusiasm to the account of honour--Eustace particularly,
because he was most in love. He was also very jealous, especially of the
heroical Rinaldo, Prince of Este; and as the squadron of horse to which
they both belonged--the greatest in the army--had lately been deprived of
its chief, Eustace cast in his mind how he might keep Rinaldo from going
with Armida, and at the same time secure his own attendance on her, by
advancing him to the vacant post. He offered his services to Rinaldo for
the purpose, not without such emotion as let the hero into his secret;
but as the latter had no desire to wait on the lady, he smilingly
assented, agreeing at the same time to assist the wishes of the lover.
The emissaries of Satan, however, were at work in all quarters. If
Eustace was jealous of Rinaldo as a rival in love, Gernando, Prince of
Norway, another of the squadron that had lost its chief, was no less
so of his gallantry in war, and of his qualifications for being his
commander. Gernando was a haughty barbarian, who thought that every sort
of pre-eminence was confined to princes of blood royal. He heard of
the proposal of Eustace with a disgust that broke into the unworthiest
expressions. He even vented it in public, in the open part of the camp,
when Rinaldo was standing at no great distance; and the words coming to
the hero's ears, and breaking down the tranquillity of his contempt,
the latter darted towards him, sword in hand, and defied him to single
combat. Gernando beheld death before him, but made a show of valour, and
stood on his defence. A thousand swords leaped forth to back him, mixed
with as many voices; and half the camp of Godfrey tried to withhold the
impetuous youth who was for deciding his quarrel without the general's
leave. But the hero's transport was not to be stopped; he dashed through
them all, forced the Norwegian to encounter him, and after a storm of
blows that dazzled the man's eyes and took away his senses, ran his sword
thrice through the prince's body. He then sent the blade into its sheath
reeking as it was, and, taking his way back to his tent, reposed in the
calmness of his triumph.
The victor had scarcely gone, when the general arrived on the ground. He
beheld the slain Prince of Norway with acute feelings of regret. What was
to become of his army, if the leaders thus quarrelled among themselves,
and his authority was set at nought? The friends of the slain man
increased his anger against Rinaldo, by charging him with all the blame
of the catastrophe. The hero's friend, Tancred, assuaged it somewhat by
disclosing the truth, and then ventured to ask pardon for the outbreak.
But the wise commander skewed so many reasons why such an offence could
not be overlooked, and his countenance expressed such a determination to
resent it, that the gallant youth hastened secretly to his friend, and
urged him to quit the camp till his services should be needed. Rinaldo at
first called for his arms, and was bent on resisting every body who came
to seize him, had it been even Godfrey himself; but Tancred shewing
him how unjust that would be, and how fatal to the Christian cause, he
consented with an ill grace to depart. He would take nobody with him but
two squires; and he went away raging with a sense of ill requital for
his achievements, but resolving to prove their value by destroying every
infidel prince that he could encounter.
Armida now tried in vain to make an impression on the heart of Godfrey.
He was insensible to all her devices; but she succeeded in quitting the
camp with her ten champions. Lots were drawn to determine who should go;
and all who failed to be in the list--Eustace among them--were so jealous
of the rest, that at night-time, after the others had been long on
the road, they set out to overtake them, each by himself, and all in
violation of their soldierly words. The ten opposed them as they came up,
but to no purpose. Armida reconciled them all in appearance, by feigning
to be devoted to each in secret; and thus she rode on with them many a
mile, till she came to a castle on the Dead Sea, where she was accustomed
to practise her unfriendliest arts.
Meanwhile news came to Godfrey that his Egyptian enemies were at hand
with a great fleet, and that his caravan of provisions had been taken by
the robbers of the desert. His army was thus threatened with ruin from
desertion, starvation, and the sword. He maintained a calm and even a
cheerful countenance; but in his thoughts he had great anxiety.
Part the Second.
ARMIDA'S HATE AND LOVE.
The castle to which Armida took her prisoners occupied an island close to
the shore in the loathsome Dead Sea. They entered it by means of a narrow
bridge; but if their pity had been great at seeing her forced to take
refuge in a spot so desolate and repulsive, how pleasingly was it changed
into as great a surprise at finding a totally different region within the
walls! The gardens were extensive and lovely; the rivulets and fountains
as sweet as the flowery thickets they watered; the breezes refreshing,
the skies of a sapphire blue, and the birds were singing round about them
in the trees. Her riches astonished them no less. The side of the castle
that looked on the gardens was all marble and gold; a banquet awaited
them beside a water on a shady lawn, consisting of the exquisitest viands
on the costliest plate; and a hundred beautiful maidens attended them
while they feasted. The enchantress was all smiles and delight; and such
was her art, that although she bestowed no favour on any body beyond his
banquet and his hopes, every body thought himself the favoured lover.
But no sooner was the feast over, than the greatest and worst of their
astonishments ensued. The lady quitted them, saying she should return
presently. She did so with a troubled and unfriendly countenance, having
a book in one hand, and a little wand in the other. She read in the book
in a low voice, and while she was reading shook the little wand; and the
guests, altering in every part of their being, and shrinking into minute
bodies, felt an inclination, which they obeyed, to plunge into the water
beside them. They were fish. In a little while they were again men,
looking her in the face with dread and amazement. She had restored them
to their humanity. She regarded them with a severe countenance, and said
"You have tasted my power; I can exercise it far more terribly--can put
you in dungeons for ever--can turn you to roots in the ground--to flints
within the rock. Beware of my wrath, and please me; quit your faiths for
mine, and fight against the blasphemer Godfrey. "
Every Christian but one rejected her alternative with abhorrence. Him she
made one of her champions; the rest were tied and bound, and after being
kept a while in a dungeon were sent off as a present to the King of
Egypt, with an escort that came from Damascus to fetch them.
Exulting was left the fair and bigoted magician; but she little guessed
what a new fortune awaited them on the road. The discord with which the
powers of evil had seconded her endeavours to weaken the Christian camp,
had turned in this instance against herself. It had made Rinaldo a
wanderer; it had brought his wanderings into this very path; and he now
met the prisoners, and bade defiance to the escort. A battle ensued, in
which the hero won his accustomed victory. The Christians, receiving the
armour of their foes, joyfully took their way back to the camp; and one
of the escort, who escaped the slaughter, returned to Armida with news of
the deliverance of her captives.
The mortified enchantress took horse and went in pursuit of Rinaldo, with
wrath and vengeance in her heart. She tracked him from place to place,
till she knew he must arrive on the banks of the Orontes; and there,
making a stealthy circuit, she cast a spell, and lay in wait for him in a
little island which divided the stream in two. [3]
Rinaldo came up with his squires; he beheld on the bank a pillar of white
marble, and beside it on the water a little boat. The pillar presented
an inscription, inviting travellers to cross to the island and behold a
wonder of the world. The hero accepted the invitation; but as the boat
was too small to hold more than one person, and the circumstance probably
an appeal to his courage, he bade his squires wait for him, and proceeded
by himself.
On reaching the island and casting his eyes eagerly round about, the
adventurer could discern nothing but trees and grottos, flowers and
grass, and water. He thought himself trifled with; but as the spot was
beautiful and refreshing, he took off his helmet, resolving to stay a
little and repose. He crossed to the farther side of the island, and lay
down on the river-side. On a sudden he observed the water bubble and
gurgle in a manner that was very strange; and presently the top of a head
arose with beautiful hair, then the face of a damsel, then the bosom.
The fair creature stood half out of the stream, and warbled a song so
luxurious and so lulling, that the little wind there was seemed to
fall in order to listen; and the young warrior was so drowsed with the
sweetness, that languor crept through all his senses, and he slept.
Armida came from out a thicket and looked on him. She had resolved that
he should perish. But when she saw how placidly he breathed, and what an
intimation of beautiful eyes there was in his very eyelids, she hung over
him, still looking.
In a little while she sat down by his side, always looking. She hung over
him as Narcissus did over the water, and indignation melted out of her
heart. She cooled his face with her veil; she made a fan of it; she gave
herself up to the worship of those hidden eyes. Of an enemy she became a
lover. [4]
Armida gathered trails of roses and lilies from the thickets around her,
and cast a spell on them, and made bands with which she fettered his
sleeping limbs; and then she called her nymphs, and they put him into her
ear, and she went away with him through the air far off, even to one of
the Fortunate Islands in the great ocean, where her jealousy, assisted by
her art, would be in dread of no visitors, no discovery. She bore him to
the top of a mountain, and cast a spell about the mountain, to make the
top lovely and the sides inaccessible. She put shapes of wild beasts
and monsters in the woods of the lowest region, and heaps of ice in the
second, and alluring and betraying shapes and enchantments towards the
summit; and round the summit she put walls and labyrinths of inextricable
error; and in the heart of these was a palace by a lake, and the
loveliest of gardens.
Mere Rinaldo was awaked by love and beauty; and here for the present he
is left.
Part the Third.
THE TERRORS OF THE ENCHANTED FOREST.
Meantime the siege of the Holy City had gone on, with various success on
either side, but chiefly to the loss of the Christians. The machinations
of Satan were prevailing. Rinaldo, in his absence, was thought to have
been slain by the contrivance of Godfrey, which nearly produced a revolt
of the forces. Godfrey was himself wounded in battle by Clorinda: and now
the great wooden tower was burnt, and Clorinda slain in consequence (as
you have heard in another place), which oppressed the courage of Tancred
with melancholy.
On the other hand, the Powers of Evil were far from being as prosperous
as they wished. They had lost the soul of Clorinda. They had seen Godfrey
healed by a secret messenger from Heaven, who dropt celestial balsam
into his wound. They had seen the return of Armida's prisoners, who had
arrived just in time to change the fortune of a battle, and drive the
Pagans back within their walls. And worse than all, they had again felt
the arm of St. Michael, who had threatened them with worse consequences
if they reappeared in the contest.
The fiends, however, had colleagues on earth, who plotted for them
meanwhile. The Christians had set about making another tower; but in
this proceeding they were thwarted by the enchanter Ismeno, who cast his
spells to better purpose this time than he had done in the affair of the
stolen image. The forest in which the Christians obtained wood for these
engines lay in a solitary valley, not far from the camp. It was very old,
dark, and intricate; and had already an evil fame as the haunt of impure
spirits. No shepherd ever took his flock there; no Pagan would cut a
bough from it; no traveller approached it, unless he had lost his way:
he made a large circuit to avoid it, and pointed it out anxiously to his
companions.
The necessity of the Christians compelled them to defy this evil repute
of the forest; and Ismeno hastened to oppose them. He drew his line, and
uttered his incantations, and called on the spirits whom St. Michael had
rebuked, bidding them come and take charge of the forest--every one of
his tree, as a soul of its body. The spirits delayed at first, not only
for dread of the great angel, but because they resented the biddings of
mortality, even in their own cause. The magician, however, persisted; and
his spells becoming too powerful to be withstood, presently they came
pouring in by myriads, occupying the whole place, and rendering the very
approach to it a task of fear and labour. The first party of men that
came to cut wood were unable to advance when they beheld the trees, but
turned like children, and became the mockery of the camp. Godfrey sent
them back, with a chosen squadron to animate them to the work; but the
squadron themselves, however boldly they affected to proceed, lead no
sooner approached the spot, than they found reason to forgive the fears
of the woodcutters. The earth shook; a great wind began rising, with a
sound of waters; and presently, every dreadful noise ever heard by man
seemed mingled into one, and advancing to meet them--roarings of lions,
hissings of serpents, pealings and rolls of thunder. The squadron went
back to Godfrey, and plainly confessed that it had not courage enough to
enter such a place.
A leader, of the name of Alcasto, shook his head at this candour with a
contemptuous smile. He was a man of the stupider sort of courage, without
mind enough to conceive danger. "Pretty soldiers," exclaimed he, "to be
afraid of noises and sights! Give the duty to me. Nothing shall stop
Alcasto, though the place be the mouth of hell. "
Alcasto went; and he went farther than the rest, and the trembling
woodcutters once more prepared their axes; but, on a sudden, there sprang
up between them and the trees a wall of fire which girded the whole
forest. It had glowing battlements and towers; and on these there
appeared armed spirits, with the strangest and most bewildering aspects.
Alcasto retired--slowly indeed, but with shame and terror; nor had he the
courage to re-appear before his commander. Godfrey had him brought, but
could hardly get a word from his lips. The man talked like one in a
dream.
At last Tancred went. He would have, gone before; but he had neither
thought the task so difficult, nor did he care for any thing that was
going forward. His mind was occupied with the dead Clorinda. He had now
work that aroused him; and he set out in good earnest for the forest, not
unmoved in his imagination, but resolved to defy all appearances.
Arrived at the wall of fire, Tancred halted a moment, and looked up at
the visages on its battlements, not without alarm. Many reflections
passed swiftly through his mind, some urging him forward, others
withholding; but he concluded with stepping right through the fire. It
did not resist him: he did not feel it.
The fire vanished; and, in its stead, there poured down a storm of hail
and rain, black as midnight. This vanished also.
Tancred stood amazed for an instant, and then passed on. He was soon in
the thick of the wood, and for some time made his way with difficulty. On
a sudden, he issued forth into a large open glade, like an amphitheatre,
in which there was nothing but a cypress-tree that stood in the middle.
The cypress was marked with hieroglyphical characters, mixed with some
words in the Syrian tongue which he could read; and these words requested
the stranger to spare the fated place, nor trouble the departed souls who
were there shut up in the trees. Meantime the wind was constantly moaning
around it; and in the moaning was a sound of human sighs and tears.
Tancred's heart, for a moment, was overcome with awe and pity; but
recollecting himself, and resolving to make amends for his credulity,
he smote with all his might at the cypress. The blow, wonderful to see,
produced an effusion of blood, which dyed the grass about the root.
Tancred's hair stood on end. He smote, however, again, with double
violence, resolving to see the end of the marvel; and then he heard a
woful voice issuing as from a tomb.
"Hast thou not hurt me," it said, "Tancred, enough already? Hast thou
slain the human body which I once joyfully inhabited; and now must thou
cut and rend me, even in this wretched enclosure? My name was Clorinda.
Every tree which thou beholdest is the habitation of some Christian or
Pagan soul; for all come hither that are slain beneath the walls of the
city, compelled by I know not what power, or for what reason. Every bough
in the forest is alive; and when thou cuttest down a tree, thou slayest a
soul. "
As a sick man in a dream thinks, and yet thinks not, that he sees some
dreadful monster, and, notwithstanding his doubt, wishes to fly from the
horrible perplexity; so the trembling lover, though suspecting what he
beheld, had so frightful an image before his thoughts of Clorinda weeping
and wailing after death, and bleeding in her very soul, that he had
not the heart to do more, or to remain in the place. He returned in
bewildered sorrow to Godfrey, and told him all. "It is not in my power,"
he said, "to touch another bough of that forest. "[5]
The astonished leader of the Christians now made up his mind to go
himself; and so, with prayer and valour united, bring this appalling
adventure to some conclusion. But the hermit Peter dissuaded him. The
holy man, in an ecstacy of foreknowledge, beheld the coming of the only
champion fated to conclude it; and Godfrey himself the same night had a
vision from heaven, bidding him grant the petition of those who should
sue him next day for the recall of Rinaldo from exile--Rinaldo, the right
hand of the army, as Godfrey was its head.
The petition was made as soon as daylight appeared; and two knights,
Carlo and Ubaldo, were despatched in search of the fated hero.
Part the Fourth
THE LOVES OF RINALDO AND ARMIDA.
The knights, with information procured on the road from a good wizard,
struck off for the sea-coast, and embarking in a pinnace which
miraculously awaited them, sailed along the shores of the Mediterranean
for the retreat of Armida. They saw the Egyptian army assembled at Gaza,
but hoped to return with Rinaldo before it could effect anything at
Jerusalem. They passed the mouths of the Nile, and Alexandria, and
Cyrene, and Ptolemais, and the cities of the Moors, and the dangers of
the Greater and Lesser Whirlpools, and their pilot showed them the spot
where Carthage stood,--Carthage, now a dead city, whose grave is scarcely
discernible. For cities die; kingdoms die;--a little sand and grass
covers all that was once lofty in them and glorious. And yet man,
forsooth, disdains that he is mortal!
Oh, mind of ours, inordinate and
proud! [6]
After looking towards the site of Carthage, they passed Algiers, and
Oran, and Tingitana, and beheld the opposite coast of Spain, and
then they cleared the narrow sea of Gibraltar, and came out into the
immeasurable ocean, leaving all sight of land behind them; and so
speeding ever onward in the billows, they beheld at last a cluster of
mountainous and beautiful islands; the larger ones inhabited by a simple
people, the smaller quite wild and desolate. So at least they appeared.
But in one of these smaller islands was the mountain, on the top of
which, in the indulgence of every lawless pleasure, lay the champion of
the Christian faith. This the pilot shewed to the two knights, and then
steered the pinnace into its bay; and here, after a voyage of four days
and nights, it dropped its sails without need of anchor, so mild and
sheltered was the port, with natural moles curving towards the entrance,
and evergreen woods overhead.
It was evening, with a beautiful sunset. The knights took leave of the
pilot, and setting out instantly on their journey, well furnished with
all advices how to proceed, slept that night at the foot of the mountain;
for they were not to begin to scale it till sunrise. With the first beams
of the sun they arose and ascended. They had not climbed far, when a
serpent rushed out upon the path, entirely stopping it, but fled at the
sound of a slender rod, which Ubaldo whisked as he advanced. A lion, for
all his cavernous jaws, did the same; nor was greater resistance made by
a whole herd of monsters. They now mounted with great labour the region
of ice and snow; but, at the top of it, emerged from winter-time into
summer. The air was full of sweet odours, yet fresh; they sauntered (for
they could not walk fast) over a velvet sward, under trees, by the side
of a shady river; and a bewitching pleasure began to invite their senses.
But they knew the river, and bore in mind their duty. It was called the
River of Laughter. [7] A little way on, increasing in beauty as it went,
it formed a lucid pool in a dell; and by the side of this pool was a
table spread with every delicacy, and in the midst of it two bathing
damsels, talking and laughing. Sometimes they sprinkled one another, then
dived, then partly came up without spewing their faces, then played a
hundred tricks, pretending all the while not to see the travellers. Then
they became quiet, and sunk gently; and, as they reappeared, one of them
rose half into sight, sweetly as the morning star when it issues from the
water, dewy and dropping, or as Venus herself arose out of the froth of
the sea. Such looked this damsel, and so did the crystal moisture
go dropping from her tresses. Then she turned her eyes towards the
travellers, and feigning to behold them for the first time, shrunk within
herself. She hastened to undo the knot in which her tresses were tied up,
and shook them round about her, and down they fell to the water thick and
long, enclosing that beautiful sight; and yet the enclosure itself was
not less beautiful. So, hid in the pool below, and in her tresses above,
she glanced at the knights through her hair, with a blushing gladness.
She blushed and she laughed at the same time; and the blushing was more
beautiful for the laughter, and the laughter for the blushing; and then
she said, in a voice which would alone have conquered any other hearers,
"You are very happy to be allowed to come to this place. Nothing but
delight is here. Our queen must have chosen you from a great number. But
be pleased first to rid you of the dust of your journey, and to refresh
yourselves at this table. "
So spake the one; and the other accompanied her speech with accordant
looks and gestures, as the dance accompanies the music.
Nor was the allurement unfelt.
But the companions passed on, taking no notice; and the bathers went
sullenly under the water. [8]
The knights passed through the gates of the park of Armida, and entered a
labyrinth made with contrivance the most intricate. Here their path would
have been lost, but for a map traced by one who knew the secret. By
the help of this they threaded it in safety, and issued upon a garden
beautiful beyond conception. Every thing that could be desired in
gardens was presented to their eyes in one landscape, and yet without
contradiction or confusion,--flowers, fruits, water, sunny hills,
descending woods, retreats into corners and grottos: and what put the
last loveliness upon the scene was, that the art which did it all was no
where discernible. [9] You might have supposed (so exquisitely was the
wild and the cultivated united) that all had somehow happened, not been
contrived. It seemed to be the art of Nature herself; as though, in a fit
of playfulness, she had imitated her imitator. But the temperature of the
place, if nothing else, was plainly the work of magic, for blossoms and
fruit abounded at the same time. The ripe and the budding fig grew on the
same bough; green apples were clustered upon those with red cheeks; the
vines in one place had small leaves and hard little grapes, and in the
next they laid forth their richest tapestry in the sun, heavy with
bunches full of wine. At one time you listened to the warbling of birds;
and a minute after, as if they had stopped on purpose, nothing was heard
but the whispering of winds and the fall of waters. It seemed as if every
thing in the place contributed to the harmony and the sweetness. The
notes of the turtle-dove were deeper here than any where else; the hard
oak, and the chaste laurel, and the whole exuberant family of trees,
the earth, the water, every element of creation, seemed to have been
compounded but for one object, and to breathe forth the fulness of its
bliss. [10]
The two messengers, hardening their souls with all their might against
the enchanting impression, moved forward silently among the trees; till,
looking through the branches into a little opening which formed a bower,
they saw--or did they but think they saw? --no, they saw indeed the hero
and his Armida reclining on the grass. [11] Her dress was careless,
her hair loose in the summer-wind. His head lay in her bosom; a smile
trembled on her lips and in her eyes, like a sunbeam in water; and as she
thus looked on him with passionate love, he looked up at her, face to
face, and returned it with all his soul.
Now she kissed his lips, now his eyes; and then they looked again at one
another with their ever-hungry looks; and then she kissed him again, and
he gave a sigh so deep you would have thought his soul had gone out of
him, and passed into hers. The two warriors from their covert gazed on
the loving scene.
At the lover's side there hung a strange accoutrement for a warrior,
namely, a crystal mirror. He rose a little on his elbow, and gave it into
Armida's hands: and in two different objects each beheld but one emotion,
she hers in the glass, and he his own in her eyes. But he would not
suffer her to look long at any thing but himself; and then they spake
loving and adoring words; and after a while Armida bound up her hair, and
put some flowers into it, as jewels might be put upon gold, and added a
rose or two to the lilies of her bosom, and adjusted her veil. And never
did peacock look so proudly beautiful when he displays the pomp of his
eyed plumes; nor was ever the rainbow so sweetly coloured when it curves
forth its dewy bosom against the light. [12] But lovely above all was the
effect of a magic girdle which the enchantress had made with her whole
art, and which she never laid aside day or night. Spirit in it had taken
substance; the subtlest emotions of the soul a shape and palpability.
Tender disdains were in it, and repulses that attracted, and levities
that endeared, and contentments full of joy, and smiles, and little
words, and drops of delicious tears, and short-coming sighs, and soft
kisses. All these she had mingled together, and made one delight out
of many, and wound it about her heart, and wore it for a charm
irresistible. [13]
And now she kissed him once more, and begged leave of a little absence
(for love is courteous ever), and so went as usual to her books and her
magic arts. Rinaldo remained where he was, for he had no power to wish
himself out of the sweet spot; only he would stray a while among the
trees, and amuse himself with the birds and squirrels, and so be a loving
hermit till she returned. And at night they retired under one roof, still
in the midst of the garden.
But no sooner had Armida gone, than the two warriors issued from their
hiding-place, and stood before the lover, glittering in their noble arms.
As a war-horse, that has been taken from the wars, and become the
luxurious husband of the stud, wanders among the drove in the meadows in
vile enjoyment; should by chance a trumpet be heard in the place, or a
dazzling battle-axe become visible, he turns towards it on the instant,
and neighs, and longs to be in the lists, and vehemently desires the
rider on his back who is to dash and be dashed at in the encounter;--even
so turned the young hero when the light of the armour flashed upon him,
even so longed for the war, even so shook himself up out of his bed of
pleasure, with all his great qualities awaked and eager.
Ubaldo saw the movement in his heart, and held right in his face the
shield of adamant, which had been brought for the purpose. It was a
mirror that shewed to the eyes of every one who looked into it the very
man as he was.
But when Rinaldo beheld himself indeed,--when he read his transformation,
not in the flattering glass of the enchantress, but by the light of
this true, and simple, and severe reflector,--his hair tricked out with
flowers and unguents, his soft mantle of exquisitest dye, and his very
sword rendered undistinguishable for what it was by a garland,--shame and
remorse fell upon him. He felt indeed like a dreamer come to himself. He
looked down. He could not speak. He wished to hide himself in the bottom
of the sea.
Ubaldo raised his voice and spoke. "All Europe and Asia," said he, "are
in arms. Whoever desires fame, or is a worshipper of his Saviour, is a
fighter in the land of Syria. Thou only, O son of Bertoldo, remainest
out of the high way of renown--in luxury--in a little corner; thou only,
unmoved with the movement of the world, the champion of a girl. What
dream, what lethargy can have drowned a valour like thine? What vileness
have had attraction for thee? Up, up, and with us. The camp, the
commander himself calls for thee; fortune and victory await thee. Come,
fated warrior, and finish thy work; see the false creed which thou hast
shaken, laid low beneath thy inevitable sword. "
On hearing these words the noble youth remained for a time without
speaking, without moving. At length shame gave way to a passionate sense
of his duty. With a new fire in his cheeks, he tore away the effeminate
ornaments of his servitude, and quitted the spot without a word. In a few
moments he had threaded the labyrinth: he was outside the gate. Ere long
he was descending the mountain.
But meantime Armida had received news of the two visitors; and coming to
look for them, and casting her eyes down the steep, she beheld--with his
face, alas, turned no longer towards her own--the hasty steps of her hero
between his companions. She wished to cry aloud, but was unable. She
might have resorted to some of her magic devices, but her heart forbade
her. She ran, however--for what cared she for dignity? --she ran down
the mountain, hoping still by her beauty and her tears to arrest the
fugitive; but his feet were too strong, even for love: she did not reach
him till he had arrived on the sea-shore. Where was her pride now? where
the scorn she had exhibited to so many suitors? where her coquetry and
her self-sufficiency--her love of being loved, with the power to hate the
lover? The enchantress was now taught what the passion was, in all its
despair as well as delight. She cried aloud. She cared not for the
presence of the messengers. "Oh, go not, Rinaldo," she cried; "go not, or
take me with thee. My heart is torn to pieces. Take me, or turn and kill
me. Stop, at least, and be cruel to me here. If thou hast the heart to
fly me, it will not be hard to thee to stay and be unkind. "
Even the messengers were moved at this, or seemed to be moved. Ubaldo
told the fugitive that it would be heroical in him to wait and hear what
the lady had to say, with gentleness and firmness.
His conquest over himself would then be complete.
Rinaldo stopped, and Armida came up breathless and in tears--lovelier
than ever. She looked earnestly at him at first, without a word. He gave
her but a glance, and looked aside.
As a fine singer, before he lets loose his tongue in the lofty utterance
of his emotion, prepares the minds of his hearers with some sweet
prelude, exquisitely modulating in a lower tone,--so the enchantress,
whose anguish had not deprived her of all sense of her art, breathed a
few sighs to dispose the soul of her idol to listen, and then said: "I
do not beg thee to hear me as one that loves me. We both loved once; but
that is over. I beg thee to hear, even though as one that loves me not.
It will cost thy disdain nothing to grant me that. Perhaps thou hast
discovered a pleasure in hating me. Do so. I come not to deprive thee of
it. If it seem just to thee, just let it be. I too once hated. I hated
the Christians--hated even thyself. I thought it right to do so: I was
bred up to think it. I pursued thee to do thee mischief; I overtook thee;
I bore thee away; and worse than all--for now perhaps thou loathest me
for it--I loved thee. I loved thee, for the first time that I loved any
one; nay, I made thee love me in turn; and, alas, I gave myself into
thine arms. It was wrong. I was foolish; I was wicked. I grant that I
have deserved thou shouldst think ill of me, that thou shouldst punish
me, and quit me, and hate to have any remembrance of this place which I
had filled with delights. Go; pass over the seas; make war against my
friends and my country; destroy us all, and the religion we believe in.
Alas! _'we'_ do I say? The religion is mine no longer--O thou, the cruel
idol of my soul. Oh, let me go with thee, if it be but as thy servant,
thy slave. Let the conqueror take with him his captive; let her be
mocked; let her be pointed at; only let her be with thee. I will cut off
these tresses, which no longer please thee: I will clothe myself in other
attire, and go with thee into the battle. I have courage and strength
enough to bear thy lance, to lead thy spare-horse, to be, above all,
thy shield-bearer--thy shield. Nothing shall touch thee but through
me--through this bosom, Rinaldo. Perhaps mischance may spare thee for
its sake. Not a word? not a little word? Do I dare to boast of what thou
hadst once a kind word for, though now thou wilt neither look upon me nor
speak to me? "
She could say no more: her words were suffocated by a torrent of tears.
But she sought to take his hand, to arrest him by his mantle--in vain.
He could scarcely, it is true, restrain his tears: but he did. He looked
sorrowful, but composed; and at length he said: "Armida, would I could do
as thou wishest; but I cannot. I would relieve thee instantly of all this
tumult of emotion. No hate is there in him that must quit thee; no such
disdain as thou fanciest; nothing but the melancholy and impetuous sense
of his duty. Thou hast erred, it is true--erred both in love and hate;
but have I not erred with thee? and can I find excuse which is not found
for thyself? Dear and honoured ever wilt thou be with Rinaldo, whether in
joy or sorrow. Count me, if it please thee, thy champion still, as far as
my country and my faith permit; but here, in this spot, must be buried
all else--buried, not for my sake only, but for that of thy beauty, thy
worthiness, thy royal blood. Consent to disparage thyself no longer.
Peace be with thee. I go where I have no permission to take thee with me.
Be happy; be wise. " While Rinaldo was speaking in this manner, Armida
changed colour; her bosom heaved; her eyes took a new kind of fire; scorn
rose upon her lip. When he finished, she looked at him with a bitterness
that rejected every word he had said; and then she exclaimed: "Thou hast
no such blood in thine own veins as thou canst fear to degrade. Thy
boasted descent is a fiction: base, and brutish, and insensible was thy
stock. What being of gentle blood could quit a love like mine without
even a tear--a sigh? What but the mockery of a man could call me his, and
yet leave me? vouchsafe me his pardon, as if I had offended him? excuse
my guilt and my tenderness; he, the sage of virtue, and me, the wretch! O
God! and these are the men that take upon them to slaughter the innocent,
and dictate faiths to the world! Go, hard heart, with such peace as thou
leavest in this bosom. Begone; take thine injustice from my sight for
ever. My spirit will follow thee, not as a help, but as a retribution.
I shall die first, and thou wilt die speedily: thou wilt perish in the
battle. Thou wilt lie expiring among the dead and bleeding, and wilt call
on Armida in thy last moments, and I shall hear it--yes, I shall hear it;
I shall look for that. "
Down fell Armida on the ground, senseless; and Rinaldo stood over her,
weeping at last. Open thine eyes, poor wretch, and see him. Alas, the
heavens deny thee the consolation! What will he do? Will he leave thee
lying there betwixt dead and alive? Or will he go--pitying thee, but
still going? He goes; he is gone; he is in the bark, and the wind is in
the sail; and he looks back--ever back; but still goes: the shore begins
to be out of sight.
Armida woke, and was alone. She raved again, but it was for vengeance.
In a few days she was with the Egyptian army, a queen at the head of her
vassals, going against the Christians at Jerusalem.
Part the Fifth.
THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE FOREST, AND THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM, &c.
Rinaldo arrived without loss of time in the Christian camp before
Jerusalem. Every body rejoiced to see the right hand of the army. Godfrey
gladly pardoned him; the hermit Peter blessed him; he himself retired to
beg the forgiveness and favour of Heaven; and then he went straight to
the Enchanted Forest.
It was a beautiful morning, and the forest, instead of presenting its
usual terrors, appeared to him singularly tranquil and pleasing. On
entering it he heard, not dreadful thunder-claps, but harmonies made
up of all sorts of gentle and lovely sounds--brooks, whispering winds,
nightingales, organs, harps, human voices. He went slowly and cautiously,
and soon came to a beautiful river which encircled the heart of the wood.
A bridge of gold carried him over. He had no sooner crossed it, than the
river higher up suddenly swelled and rushed like a torrent, sweeping
the bridge away. The harmony meanwhile had become silent. Admiring, but
nothing daunted, the hero went on.
Every thing as he advanced appeared to start into fresh beauty. His steps
produced lilies and roses; here leaped up a fountain, and there came
falling a cascade; the wood itself seemed to grow young as with sudden
spring; and he again heard the music and the human voices, though he
could see no one.
Passing through the trees, he came into a glade in the heart of the wood,
in the centre of which he beheld a myrtle-tree, the largest and most
beautiful ever seen: it was taller than a cypress or palm, and seemed the
queen of the forest. Looking around him, he observed to his astonishment
an oak suddenly cleave itself open, and out of it there came a nymph. A
hundred other trees did the same, giving birth to as many nymphs. They
were all habited as we see them in theatres; only, instead of bows and
arrows, each held a lute or guitar. Coming towards the hero with joyful
eyes, they formed a circle about him, and danced; and in their dancing
they sang, and bade him welcome to the haunt of their mistress, their
loving mistress, of whom he was the only hope and joy. Looking as they
spoke towards the myrtle, Rinaldo looked also, and beheld, issuing out of
it--Armida.
Armida came sweetly towards him, with a countenance at once grieving and
rejoicing, but expressing above all infinite affection. "And do I indeed
see thee again? " she said; "and wilt thou not fly me a second time? am
I visited to be consoled, or to be treated again as an enemy? is poor
Armida so formidable, that thou must needs close up thine helmet when
thou beholdest her? Thou mightest surely have vouchsafed her once more a
sight of thine eyes. Let us be friends, at least, if we may be nothing
more. Wilt thou not take her hand? "
Rinaldo's answer was, to turn away as from a cheat, to look towards the
myrtle-tree, to draw his sword, and proceed with manifest intentions of
assailing it. She ran before him shrieking, and hugged it round. "Nay,
thou wilt not," she said, "thou wilt not hurt my tree--not cut and slay
what is bound up with the life of Armida? Thy sword must pass first
through her bosom. "
Armida writhed and wailed; Rinaldo nevertheless raised his sword, and it
was coming against the tree, when her shape, like a thing in a dream,
was metamorphosed as quick as lightning.
the terrors of his aspect. His eyes reddened; his poisonous look hung in
the air like a comet; the mouth, as it opened in the midst of clouds of
beard, seemed an abyss of darkness and blood; and out of it, as from a
volcano, issued fires, and vapours, and disgust.
Satan laid forth to his dreadful hearers his old quarrel with Heaven,
and its new threats of an extension of its empire. Christendom was to be
brought into Asia; their worshippers were to perish; souls were to be
rescued from their devices, and Satan's kingdom on earth put an end to.
He exhorted them therefore to issue forth once for all and prevent this
fatal consummation by the destruction of the Christian forces. Some of
the leaders he bade them do their best to disperse, others to slay,
others to draw into effeminate pleasures, into rebellion, into the ruin
of the whole camp, so that not a vestige might remain of its existence.
The assembly broke up with the noise of hurricanes. They issued forth
to look once more upon the stars, and to sow seeds every where of
destruction to the Christians. Satan himself followed them, and entered
the heart of Hydraotes, king of Damascus.
Hydraotes was a wizard as well as a king, and held the Christians in
abhorrence. But he was wise enough to respect their valour; and with
Satan's help he discerned the likeliest way to counteract it. He had a
niece, who was the greatest beauty of the age. He had taught her his art:
and he concluded, that the enchantments of beauty and magic united would
prove irresistible. He therefore disclosed to her his object. He told her
that every artifice was lawful, when the intention was to serve one's
country and one's faith; and he conjured her to do her utmost to separate
Godfrey himself from his army, or in the event of that not being
possible, to bring away as many as she could of his noblest captains.
Armida (for that was her name), proud of her beauty, and of the unusual
arts that she had acquired, took her way the same evening, alone, and by
the most sequestered paths,--a female in gown and tresses issuing forth
to conquer an army. [2]
She had not travelled many days ere she came in sight of the Christian
camp, the outskirts of which she entered immediately. The Frenchmen all
flocked to see her, wondering who she was, and who could have sent them
so lovely a messenger. Armida passed onwards, not with a misgiving air,
not with an unalluring, and yet not with an immodest one. Her golden
tresses she suffered at one moment to escape from under her veil, and
at another she gathered them again within it. Her rosy mouth breathed
simplicity as well as voluptuousness. Her bosom was so artfully draped,
as to let itself be discerned without seeming to intend it. And thus she
passed along, surprising and transporting every body. Coming at length
among the tents of the officers, she requested to be shewn that of the
leader; and Eustace eagerly stepped forward to conduct her.
Eustace was the younger brother of Godfrey. He had all the ardour of his
time of life, and the gallantry, in every respect, of a Frenchman. After
paying her a profusion of compliments, and learning that she was a
fugitive in distress, he promised her every thing which his brother's
authority and his own sword could do for her; and so led her into
Godfrey's presence.
The pretended fugitive made a lowly obeisance, and then stood mute and
blushing, till the general re-assured her. She then told him, that she
was the rightful queen of Damascus, whose throne was usurped by an uncle;
that her uncle sought her death, from which she had been saved by the man
who was bribed to inflict it; and that although her creed was Mahometan,
she had brought her mind to conclude, that so noble an enemy as Godfrey
would take pity on her condition, and permit some of his captains to aid
the secret wishes of her people, and seat her on the throne. Ten selected
chiefs would overcome, she said, all opposition; and she promised in
return to become his grateful and faithful vassal.
The leader of the Christian army sat a while in deliberation. His heart
was inclined to befriend the lady, but his prudence was afraid of a Pagan
artifice. He thought also that it did not become his piety to turn aside
from the enterprise which God had favoured. He therefore gave her a
gentle refusal; but added, that should success attend him, and Jerusalem
be taken, he would instantly do what she required.
Armida looked down, and wept. A mixture of indignation and despair
appeared to seize her; and exclaiming that she had no longer a wish to
live, she accused, she said, not a heart so renowned for generosity as
his, but Heaven itself which had steeled it against her. What was she to
do? She could not remain in his camp. Virgin modesty forbade that. She
was not safe out of its bounds. Her enemies tracked her steps. It was fit
that she should die by her own hand.
An indignant pity took possession of the French officers. They wondered
how Godfrey could resist the prayers of a creature so beautiful; and
Eustace openly, though respectfully, remonstrated. He said, that if ten
of the best of his captains could not be spared, ten others might;
that it especially became the Christians to redress the wrongs of the
innocent; that the death of a tyrant, instead of being a deviation from
the service of God, was one of the directest means of performing it; and
that France would never endure to hear, that a lady had applied to her
knights for assistance, and found her suit refused.
A murmur of approbation followed the words of Eustace. His companions
pressed nearer to the general, and warmly urged his request.
Godfrey assented to a wish expressed by so many, but not with perfect
goodwill. He bade them remember, that the measure was the result of their
own opinion, not his; and concluded by requesting them at all events, for
his sake, to moderate the excess of their confidence. The transported
warriors had scarcely any answer to make but that of congratulations to
the lady. She, on her side, while mischief was rejoicing in her heart,
first expressed her gratitude to all in words intermixed with smiles and
tears, and then carried herself towards every one in particular in the
manner which she thought most fitted to ensnare. She behaved to this
person with cordiality, to that with comparative reserve; to one with
phrases only, to another with looks besides, and intimations of secret
preference. The ardour of some she repressed, but still in a manner to
rekindle it. To others she was all gaiety and attraction; and when others
again had their eyes upon her, she would fall into fits of absence, and
shed tears, as if in secret, and then look up suddenly and laugh, and put
on a cheerful patience. And thus she drew them all into her net.
Yet none of all these men confessed that passion impelled them; every
body laid his enthusiasm to the account of honour--Eustace particularly,
because he was most in love. He was also very jealous, especially of the
heroical Rinaldo, Prince of Este; and as the squadron of horse to which
they both belonged--the greatest in the army--had lately been deprived of
its chief, Eustace cast in his mind how he might keep Rinaldo from going
with Armida, and at the same time secure his own attendance on her, by
advancing him to the vacant post. He offered his services to Rinaldo for
the purpose, not without such emotion as let the hero into his secret;
but as the latter had no desire to wait on the lady, he smilingly
assented, agreeing at the same time to assist the wishes of the lover.
The emissaries of Satan, however, were at work in all quarters. If
Eustace was jealous of Rinaldo as a rival in love, Gernando, Prince of
Norway, another of the squadron that had lost its chief, was no less
so of his gallantry in war, and of his qualifications for being his
commander. Gernando was a haughty barbarian, who thought that every sort
of pre-eminence was confined to princes of blood royal. He heard of
the proposal of Eustace with a disgust that broke into the unworthiest
expressions. He even vented it in public, in the open part of the camp,
when Rinaldo was standing at no great distance; and the words coming to
the hero's ears, and breaking down the tranquillity of his contempt,
the latter darted towards him, sword in hand, and defied him to single
combat. Gernando beheld death before him, but made a show of valour, and
stood on his defence. A thousand swords leaped forth to back him, mixed
with as many voices; and half the camp of Godfrey tried to withhold the
impetuous youth who was for deciding his quarrel without the general's
leave. But the hero's transport was not to be stopped; he dashed through
them all, forced the Norwegian to encounter him, and after a storm of
blows that dazzled the man's eyes and took away his senses, ran his sword
thrice through the prince's body. He then sent the blade into its sheath
reeking as it was, and, taking his way back to his tent, reposed in the
calmness of his triumph.
The victor had scarcely gone, when the general arrived on the ground. He
beheld the slain Prince of Norway with acute feelings of regret. What was
to become of his army, if the leaders thus quarrelled among themselves,
and his authority was set at nought? The friends of the slain man
increased his anger against Rinaldo, by charging him with all the blame
of the catastrophe. The hero's friend, Tancred, assuaged it somewhat by
disclosing the truth, and then ventured to ask pardon for the outbreak.
But the wise commander skewed so many reasons why such an offence could
not be overlooked, and his countenance expressed such a determination to
resent it, that the gallant youth hastened secretly to his friend, and
urged him to quit the camp till his services should be needed. Rinaldo at
first called for his arms, and was bent on resisting every body who came
to seize him, had it been even Godfrey himself; but Tancred shewing
him how unjust that would be, and how fatal to the Christian cause, he
consented with an ill grace to depart. He would take nobody with him but
two squires; and he went away raging with a sense of ill requital for
his achievements, but resolving to prove their value by destroying every
infidel prince that he could encounter.
Armida now tried in vain to make an impression on the heart of Godfrey.
He was insensible to all her devices; but she succeeded in quitting the
camp with her ten champions. Lots were drawn to determine who should go;
and all who failed to be in the list--Eustace among them--were so jealous
of the rest, that at night-time, after the others had been long on
the road, they set out to overtake them, each by himself, and all in
violation of their soldierly words. The ten opposed them as they came up,
but to no purpose. Armida reconciled them all in appearance, by feigning
to be devoted to each in secret; and thus she rode on with them many a
mile, till she came to a castle on the Dead Sea, where she was accustomed
to practise her unfriendliest arts.
Meanwhile news came to Godfrey that his Egyptian enemies were at hand
with a great fleet, and that his caravan of provisions had been taken by
the robbers of the desert. His army was thus threatened with ruin from
desertion, starvation, and the sword. He maintained a calm and even a
cheerful countenance; but in his thoughts he had great anxiety.
Part the Second.
ARMIDA'S HATE AND LOVE.
The castle to which Armida took her prisoners occupied an island close to
the shore in the loathsome Dead Sea. They entered it by means of a narrow
bridge; but if their pity had been great at seeing her forced to take
refuge in a spot so desolate and repulsive, how pleasingly was it changed
into as great a surprise at finding a totally different region within the
walls! The gardens were extensive and lovely; the rivulets and fountains
as sweet as the flowery thickets they watered; the breezes refreshing,
the skies of a sapphire blue, and the birds were singing round about them
in the trees. Her riches astonished them no less. The side of the castle
that looked on the gardens was all marble and gold; a banquet awaited
them beside a water on a shady lawn, consisting of the exquisitest viands
on the costliest plate; and a hundred beautiful maidens attended them
while they feasted. The enchantress was all smiles and delight; and such
was her art, that although she bestowed no favour on any body beyond his
banquet and his hopes, every body thought himself the favoured lover.
But no sooner was the feast over, than the greatest and worst of their
astonishments ensued. The lady quitted them, saying she should return
presently. She did so with a troubled and unfriendly countenance, having
a book in one hand, and a little wand in the other. She read in the book
in a low voice, and while she was reading shook the little wand; and the
guests, altering in every part of their being, and shrinking into minute
bodies, felt an inclination, which they obeyed, to plunge into the water
beside them. They were fish. In a little while they were again men,
looking her in the face with dread and amazement. She had restored them
to their humanity. She regarded them with a severe countenance, and said
"You have tasted my power; I can exercise it far more terribly--can put
you in dungeons for ever--can turn you to roots in the ground--to flints
within the rock. Beware of my wrath, and please me; quit your faiths for
mine, and fight against the blasphemer Godfrey. "
Every Christian but one rejected her alternative with abhorrence. Him she
made one of her champions; the rest were tied and bound, and after being
kept a while in a dungeon were sent off as a present to the King of
Egypt, with an escort that came from Damascus to fetch them.
Exulting was left the fair and bigoted magician; but she little guessed
what a new fortune awaited them on the road. The discord with which the
powers of evil had seconded her endeavours to weaken the Christian camp,
had turned in this instance against herself. It had made Rinaldo a
wanderer; it had brought his wanderings into this very path; and he now
met the prisoners, and bade defiance to the escort. A battle ensued, in
which the hero won his accustomed victory. The Christians, receiving the
armour of their foes, joyfully took their way back to the camp; and one
of the escort, who escaped the slaughter, returned to Armida with news of
the deliverance of her captives.
The mortified enchantress took horse and went in pursuit of Rinaldo, with
wrath and vengeance in her heart. She tracked him from place to place,
till she knew he must arrive on the banks of the Orontes; and there,
making a stealthy circuit, she cast a spell, and lay in wait for him in a
little island which divided the stream in two. [3]
Rinaldo came up with his squires; he beheld on the bank a pillar of white
marble, and beside it on the water a little boat. The pillar presented
an inscription, inviting travellers to cross to the island and behold a
wonder of the world. The hero accepted the invitation; but as the boat
was too small to hold more than one person, and the circumstance probably
an appeal to his courage, he bade his squires wait for him, and proceeded
by himself.
On reaching the island and casting his eyes eagerly round about, the
adventurer could discern nothing but trees and grottos, flowers and
grass, and water. He thought himself trifled with; but as the spot was
beautiful and refreshing, he took off his helmet, resolving to stay a
little and repose. He crossed to the farther side of the island, and lay
down on the river-side. On a sudden he observed the water bubble and
gurgle in a manner that was very strange; and presently the top of a head
arose with beautiful hair, then the face of a damsel, then the bosom.
The fair creature stood half out of the stream, and warbled a song so
luxurious and so lulling, that the little wind there was seemed to
fall in order to listen; and the young warrior was so drowsed with the
sweetness, that languor crept through all his senses, and he slept.
Armida came from out a thicket and looked on him. She had resolved that
he should perish. But when she saw how placidly he breathed, and what an
intimation of beautiful eyes there was in his very eyelids, she hung over
him, still looking.
In a little while she sat down by his side, always looking. She hung over
him as Narcissus did over the water, and indignation melted out of her
heart. She cooled his face with her veil; she made a fan of it; she gave
herself up to the worship of those hidden eyes. Of an enemy she became a
lover. [4]
Armida gathered trails of roses and lilies from the thickets around her,
and cast a spell on them, and made bands with which she fettered his
sleeping limbs; and then she called her nymphs, and they put him into her
ear, and she went away with him through the air far off, even to one of
the Fortunate Islands in the great ocean, where her jealousy, assisted by
her art, would be in dread of no visitors, no discovery. She bore him to
the top of a mountain, and cast a spell about the mountain, to make the
top lovely and the sides inaccessible. She put shapes of wild beasts
and monsters in the woods of the lowest region, and heaps of ice in the
second, and alluring and betraying shapes and enchantments towards the
summit; and round the summit she put walls and labyrinths of inextricable
error; and in the heart of these was a palace by a lake, and the
loveliest of gardens.
Mere Rinaldo was awaked by love and beauty; and here for the present he
is left.
Part the Third.
THE TERRORS OF THE ENCHANTED FOREST.
Meantime the siege of the Holy City had gone on, with various success on
either side, but chiefly to the loss of the Christians. The machinations
of Satan were prevailing. Rinaldo, in his absence, was thought to have
been slain by the contrivance of Godfrey, which nearly produced a revolt
of the forces. Godfrey was himself wounded in battle by Clorinda: and now
the great wooden tower was burnt, and Clorinda slain in consequence (as
you have heard in another place), which oppressed the courage of Tancred
with melancholy.
On the other hand, the Powers of Evil were far from being as prosperous
as they wished. They had lost the soul of Clorinda. They had seen Godfrey
healed by a secret messenger from Heaven, who dropt celestial balsam
into his wound. They had seen the return of Armida's prisoners, who had
arrived just in time to change the fortune of a battle, and drive the
Pagans back within their walls. And worse than all, they had again felt
the arm of St. Michael, who had threatened them with worse consequences
if they reappeared in the contest.
The fiends, however, had colleagues on earth, who plotted for them
meanwhile. The Christians had set about making another tower; but in
this proceeding they were thwarted by the enchanter Ismeno, who cast his
spells to better purpose this time than he had done in the affair of the
stolen image. The forest in which the Christians obtained wood for these
engines lay in a solitary valley, not far from the camp. It was very old,
dark, and intricate; and had already an evil fame as the haunt of impure
spirits. No shepherd ever took his flock there; no Pagan would cut a
bough from it; no traveller approached it, unless he had lost his way:
he made a large circuit to avoid it, and pointed it out anxiously to his
companions.
The necessity of the Christians compelled them to defy this evil repute
of the forest; and Ismeno hastened to oppose them. He drew his line, and
uttered his incantations, and called on the spirits whom St. Michael had
rebuked, bidding them come and take charge of the forest--every one of
his tree, as a soul of its body. The spirits delayed at first, not only
for dread of the great angel, but because they resented the biddings of
mortality, even in their own cause. The magician, however, persisted; and
his spells becoming too powerful to be withstood, presently they came
pouring in by myriads, occupying the whole place, and rendering the very
approach to it a task of fear and labour. The first party of men that
came to cut wood were unable to advance when they beheld the trees, but
turned like children, and became the mockery of the camp. Godfrey sent
them back, with a chosen squadron to animate them to the work; but the
squadron themselves, however boldly they affected to proceed, lead no
sooner approached the spot, than they found reason to forgive the fears
of the woodcutters. The earth shook; a great wind began rising, with a
sound of waters; and presently, every dreadful noise ever heard by man
seemed mingled into one, and advancing to meet them--roarings of lions,
hissings of serpents, pealings and rolls of thunder. The squadron went
back to Godfrey, and plainly confessed that it had not courage enough to
enter such a place.
A leader, of the name of Alcasto, shook his head at this candour with a
contemptuous smile. He was a man of the stupider sort of courage, without
mind enough to conceive danger. "Pretty soldiers," exclaimed he, "to be
afraid of noises and sights! Give the duty to me. Nothing shall stop
Alcasto, though the place be the mouth of hell. "
Alcasto went; and he went farther than the rest, and the trembling
woodcutters once more prepared their axes; but, on a sudden, there sprang
up between them and the trees a wall of fire which girded the whole
forest. It had glowing battlements and towers; and on these there
appeared armed spirits, with the strangest and most bewildering aspects.
Alcasto retired--slowly indeed, but with shame and terror; nor had he the
courage to re-appear before his commander. Godfrey had him brought, but
could hardly get a word from his lips. The man talked like one in a
dream.
At last Tancred went. He would have, gone before; but he had neither
thought the task so difficult, nor did he care for any thing that was
going forward. His mind was occupied with the dead Clorinda. He had now
work that aroused him; and he set out in good earnest for the forest, not
unmoved in his imagination, but resolved to defy all appearances.
Arrived at the wall of fire, Tancred halted a moment, and looked up at
the visages on its battlements, not without alarm. Many reflections
passed swiftly through his mind, some urging him forward, others
withholding; but he concluded with stepping right through the fire. It
did not resist him: he did not feel it.
The fire vanished; and, in its stead, there poured down a storm of hail
and rain, black as midnight. This vanished also.
Tancred stood amazed for an instant, and then passed on. He was soon in
the thick of the wood, and for some time made his way with difficulty. On
a sudden, he issued forth into a large open glade, like an amphitheatre,
in which there was nothing but a cypress-tree that stood in the middle.
The cypress was marked with hieroglyphical characters, mixed with some
words in the Syrian tongue which he could read; and these words requested
the stranger to spare the fated place, nor trouble the departed souls who
were there shut up in the trees. Meantime the wind was constantly moaning
around it; and in the moaning was a sound of human sighs and tears.
Tancred's heart, for a moment, was overcome with awe and pity; but
recollecting himself, and resolving to make amends for his credulity,
he smote with all his might at the cypress. The blow, wonderful to see,
produced an effusion of blood, which dyed the grass about the root.
Tancred's hair stood on end. He smote, however, again, with double
violence, resolving to see the end of the marvel; and then he heard a
woful voice issuing as from a tomb.
"Hast thou not hurt me," it said, "Tancred, enough already? Hast thou
slain the human body which I once joyfully inhabited; and now must thou
cut and rend me, even in this wretched enclosure? My name was Clorinda.
Every tree which thou beholdest is the habitation of some Christian or
Pagan soul; for all come hither that are slain beneath the walls of the
city, compelled by I know not what power, or for what reason. Every bough
in the forest is alive; and when thou cuttest down a tree, thou slayest a
soul. "
As a sick man in a dream thinks, and yet thinks not, that he sees some
dreadful monster, and, notwithstanding his doubt, wishes to fly from the
horrible perplexity; so the trembling lover, though suspecting what he
beheld, had so frightful an image before his thoughts of Clorinda weeping
and wailing after death, and bleeding in her very soul, that he had
not the heart to do more, or to remain in the place. He returned in
bewildered sorrow to Godfrey, and told him all. "It is not in my power,"
he said, "to touch another bough of that forest. "[5]
The astonished leader of the Christians now made up his mind to go
himself; and so, with prayer and valour united, bring this appalling
adventure to some conclusion. But the hermit Peter dissuaded him. The
holy man, in an ecstacy of foreknowledge, beheld the coming of the only
champion fated to conclude it; and Godfrey himself the same night had a
vision from heaven, bidding him grant the petition of those who should
sue him next day for the recall of Rinaldo from exile--Rinaldo, the right
hand of the army, as Godfrey was its head.
The petition was made as soon as daylight appeared; and two knights,
Carlo and Ubaldo, were despatched in search of the fated hero.
Part the Fourth
THE LOVES OF RINALDO AND ARMIDA.
The knights, with information procured on the road from a good wizard,
struck off for the sea-coast, and embarking in a pinnace which
miraculously awaited them, sailed along the shores of the Mediterranean
for the retreat of Armida. They saw the Egyptian army assembled at Gaza,
but hoped to return with Rinaldo before it could effect anything at
Jerusalem. They passed the mouths of the Nile, and Alexandria, and
Cyrene, and Ptolemais, and the cities of the Moors, and the dangers of
the Greater and Lesser Whirlpools, and their pilot showed them the spot
where Carthage stood,--Carthage, now a dead city, whose grave is scarcely
discernible. For cities die; kingdoms die;--a little sand and grass
covers all that was once lofty in them and glorious. And yet man,
forsooth, disdains that he is mortal!
Oh, mind of ours, inordinate and
proud! [6]
After looking towards the site of Carthage, they passed Algiers, and
Oran, and Tingitana, and beheld the opposite coast of Spain, and
then they cleared the narrow sea of Gibraltar, and came out into the
immeasurable ocean, leaving all sight of land behind them; and so
speeding ever onward in the billows, they beheld at last a cluster of
mountainous and beautiful islands; the larger ones inhabited by a simple
people, the smaller quite wild and desolate. So at least they appeared.
But in one of these smaller islands was the mountain, on the top of
which, in the indulgence of every lawless pleasure, lay the champion of
the Christian faith. This the pilot shewed to the two knights, and then
steered the pinnace into its bay; and here, after a voyage of four days
and nights, it dropped its sails without need of anchor, so mild and
sheltered was the port, with natural moles curving towards the entrance,
and evergreen woods overhead.
It was evening, with a beautiful sunset. The knights took leave of the
pilot, and setting out instantly on their journey, well furnished with
all advices how to proceed, slept that night at the foot of the mountain;
for they were not to begin to scale it till sunrise. With the first beams
of the sun they arose and ascended. They had not climbed far, when a
serpent rushed out upon the path, entirely stopping it, but fled at the
sound of a slender rod, which Ubaldo whisked as he advanced. A lion, for
all his cavernous jaws, did the same; nor was greater resistance made by
a whole herd of monsters. They now mounted with great labour the region
of ice and snow; but, at the top of it, emerged from winter-time into
summer. The air was full of sweet odours, yet fresh; they sauntered (for
they could not walk fast) over a velvet sward, under trees, by the side
of a shady river; and a bewitching pleasure began to invite their senses.
But they knew the river, and bore in mind their duty. It was called the
River of Laughter. [7] A little way on, increasing in beauty as it went,
it formed a lucid pool in a dell; and by the side of this pool was a
table spread with every delicacy, and in the midst of it two bathing
damsels, talking and laughing. Sometimes they sprinkled one another, then
dived, then partly came up without spewing their faces, then played a
hundred tricks, pretending all the while not to see the travellers. Then
they became quiet, and sunk gently; and, as they reappeared, one of them
rose half into sight, sweetly as the morning star when it issues from the
water, dewy and dropping, or as Venus herself arose out of the froth of
the sea. Such looked this damsel, and so did the crystal moisture
go dropping from her tresses. Then she turned her eyes towards the
travellers, and feigning to behold them for the first time, shrunk within
herself. She hastened to undo the knot in which her tresses were tied up,
and shook them round about her, and down they fell to the water thick and
long, enclosing that beautiful sight; and yet the enclosure itself was
not less beautiful. So, hid in the pool below, and in her tresses above,
she glanced at the knights through her hair, with a blushing gladness.
She blushed and she laughed at the same time; and the blushing was more
beautiful for the laughter, and the laughter for the blushing; and then
she said, in a voice which would alone have conquered any other hearers,
"You are very happy to be allowed to come to this place. Nothing but
delight is here. Our queen must have chosen you from a great number. But
be pleased first to rid you of the dust of your journey, and to refresh
yourselves at this table. "
So spake the one; and the other accompanied her speech with accordant
looks and gestures, as the dance accompanies the music.
Nor was the allurement unfelt.
But the companions passed on, taking no notice; and the bathers went
sullenly under the water. [8]
The knights passed through the gates of the park of Armida, and entered a
labyrinth made with contrivance the most intricate. Here their path would
have been lost, but for a map traced by one who knew the secret. By
the help of this they threaded it in safety, and issued upon a garden
beautiful beyond conception. Every thing that could be desired in
gardens was presented to their eyes in one landscape, and yet without
contradiction or confusion,--flowers, fruits, water, sunny hills,
descending woods, retreats into corners and grottos: and what put the
last loveliness upon the scene was, that the art which did it all was no
where discernible. [9] You might have supposed (so exquisitely was the
wild and the cultivated united) that all had somehow happened, not been
contrived. It seemed to be the art of Nature herself; as though, in a fit
of playfulness, she had imitated her imitator. But the temperature of the
place, if nothing else, was plainly the work of magic, for blossoms and
fruit abounded at the same time. The ripe and the budding fig grew on the
same bough; green apples were clustered upon those with red cheeks; the
vines in one place had small leaves and hard little grapes, and in the
next they laid forth their richest tapestry in the sun, heavy with
bunches full of wine. At one time you listened to the warbling of birds;
and a minute after, as if they had stopped on purpose, nothing was heard
but the whispering of winds and the fall of waters. It seemed as if every
thing in the place contributed to the harmony and the sweetness. The
notes of the turtle-dove were deeper here than any where else; the hard
oak, and the chaste laurel, and the whole exuberant family of trees,
the earth, the water, every element of creation, seemed to have been
compounded but for one object, and to breathe forth the fulness of its
bliss. [10]
The two messengers, hardening their souls with all their might against
the enchanting impression, moved forward silently among the trees; till,
looking through the branches into a little opening which formed a bower,
they saw--or did they but think they saw? --no, they saw indeed the hero
and his Armida reclining on the grass. [11] Her dress was careless,
her hair loose in the summer-wind. His head lay in her bosom; a smile
trembled on her lips and in her eyes, like a sunbeam in water; and as she
thus looked on him with passionate love, he looked up at her, face to
face, and returned it with all his soul.
Now she kissed his lips, now his eyes; and then they looked again at one
another with their ever-hungry looks; and then she kissed him again, and
he gave a sigh so deep you would have thought his soul had gone out of
him, and passed into hers. The two warriors from their covert gazed on
the loving scene.
At the lover's side there hung a strange accoutrement for a warrior,
namely, a crystal mirror. He rose a little on his elbow, and gave it into
Armida's hands: and in two different objects each beheld but one emotion,
she hers in the glass, and he his own in her eyes. But he would not
suffer her to look long at any thing but himself; and then they spake
loving and adoring words; and after a while Armida bound up her hair, and
put some flowers into it, as jewels might be put upon gold, and added a
rose or two to the lilies of her bosom, and adjusted her veil. And never
did peacock look so proudly beautiful when he displays the pomp of his
eyed plumes; nor was ever the rainbow so sweetly coloured when it curves
forth its dewy bosom against the light. [12] But lovely above all was the
effect of a magic girdle which the enchantress had made with her whole
art, and which she never laid aside day or night. Spirit in it had taken
substance; the subtlest emotions of the soul a shape and palpability.
Tender disdains were in it, and repulses that attracted, and levities
that endeared, and contentments full of joy, and smiles, and little
words, and drops of delicious tears, and short-coming sighs, and soft
kisses. All these she had mingled together, and made one delight out
of many, and wound it about her heart, and wore it for a charm
irresistible. [13]
And now she kissed him once more, and begged leave of a little absence
(for love is courteous ever), and so went as usual to her books and her
magic arts. Rinaldo remained where he was, for he had no power to wish
himself out of the sweet spot; only he would stray a while among the
trees, and amuse himself with the birds and squirrels, and so be a loving
hermit till she returned. And at night they retired under one roof, still
in the midst of the garden.
But no sooner had Armida gone, than the two warriors issued from their
hiding-place, and stood before the lover, glittering in their noble arms.
As a war-horse, that has been taken from the wars, and become the
luxurious husband of the stud, wanders among the drove in the meadows in
vile enjoyment; should by chance a trumpet be heard in the place, or a
dazzling battle-axe become visible, he turns towards it on the instant,
and neighs, and longs to be in the lists, and vehemently desires the
rider on his back who is to dash and be dashed at in the encounter;--even
so turned the young hero when the light of the armour flashed upon him,
even so longed for the war, even so shook himself up out of his bed of
pleasure, with all his great qualities awaked and eager.
Ubaldo saw the movement in his heart, and held right in his face the
shield of adamant, which had been brought for the purpose. It was a
mirror that shewed to the eyes of every one who looked into it the very
man as he was.
But when Rinaldo beheld himself indeed,--when he read his transformation,
not in the flattering glass of the enchantress, but by the light of
this true, and simple, and severe reflector,--his hair tricked out with
flowers and unguents, his soft mantle of exquisitest dye, and his very
sword rendered undistinguishable for what it was by a garland,--shame and
remorse fell upon him. He felt indeed like a dreamer come to himself. He
looked down. He could not speak. He wished to hide himself in the bottom
of the sea.
Ubaldo raised his voice and spoke. "All Europe and Asia," said he, "are
in arms. Whoever desires fame, or is a worshipper of his Saviour, is a
fighter in the land of Syria. Thou only, O son of Bertoldo, remainest
out of the high way of renown--in luxury--in a little corner; thou only,
unmoved with the movement of the world, the champion of a girl. What
dream, what lethargy can have drowned a valour like thine? What vileness
have had attraction for thee? Up, up, and with us. The camp, the
commander himself calls for thee; fortune and victory await thee. Come,
fated warrior, and finish thy work; see the false creed which thou hast
shaken, laid low beneath thy inevitable sword. "
On hearing these words the noble youth remained for a time without
speaking, without moving. At length shame gave way to a passionate sense
of his duty. With a new fire in his cheeks, he tore away the effeminate
ornaments of his servitude, and quitted the spot without a word. In a few
moments he had threaded the labyrinth: he was outside the gate. Ere long
he was descending the mountain.
But meantime Armida had received news of the two visitors; and coming to
look for them, and casting her eyes down the steep, she beheld--with his
face, alas, turned no longer towards her own--the hasty steps of her hero
between his companions. She wished to cry aloud, but was unable. She
might have resorted to some of her magic devices, but her heart forbade
her. She ran, however--for what cared she for dignity? --she ran down
the mountain, hoping still by her beauty and her tears to arrest the
fugitive; but his feet were too strong, even for love: she did not reach
him till he had arrived on the sea-shore. Where was her pride now? where
the scorn she had exhibited to so many suitors? where her coquetry and
her self-sufficiency--her love of being loved, with the power to hate the
lover? The enchantress was now taught what the passion was, in all its
despair as well as delight. She cried aloud. She cared not for the
presence of the messengers. "Oh, go not, Rinaldo," she cried; "go not, or
take me with thee. My heart is torn to pieces. Take me, or turn and kill
me. Stop, at least, and be cruel to me here. If thou hast the heart to
fly me, it will not be hard to thee to stay and be unkind. "
Even the messengers were moved at this, or seemed to be moved. Ubaldo
told the fugitive that it would be heroical in him to wait and hear what
the lady had to say, with gentleness and firmness.
His conquest over himself would then be complete.
Rinaldo stopped, and Armida came up breathless and in tears--lovelier
than ever. She looked earnestly at him at first, without a word. He gave
her but a glance, and looked aside.
As a fine singer, before he lets loose his tongue in the lofty utterance
of his emotion, prepares the minds of his hearers with some sweet
prelude, exquisitely modulating in a lower tone,--so the enchantress,
whose anguish had not deprived her of all sense of her art, breathed a
few sighs to dispose the soul of her idol to listen, and then said: "I
do not beg thee to hear me as one that loves me. We both loved once; but
that is over. I beg thee to hear, even though as one that loves me not.
It will cost thy disdain nothing to grant me that. Perhaps thou hast
discovered a pleasure in hating me. Do so. I come not to deprive thee of
it. If it seem just to thee, just let it be. I too once hated. I hated
the Christians--hated even thyself. I thought it right to do so: I was
bred up to think it. I pursued thee to do thee mischief; I overtook thee;
I bore thee away; and worse than all--for now perhaps thou loathest me
for it--I loved thee. I loved thee, for the first time that I loved any
one; nay, I made thee love me in turn; and, alas, I gave myself into
thine arms. It was wrong. I was foolish; I was wicked. I grant that I
have deserved thou shouldst think ill of me, that thou shouldst punish
me, and quit me, and hate to have any remembrance of this place which I
had filled with delights. Go; pass over the seas; make war against my
friends and my country; destroy us all, and the religion we believe in.
Alas! _'we'_ do I say? The religion is mine no longer--O thou, the cruel
idol of my soul. Oh, let me go with thee, if it be but as thy servant,
thy slave. Let the conqueror take with him his captive; let her be
mocked; let her be pointed at; only let her be with thee. I will cut off
these tresses, which no longer please thee: I will clothe myself in other
attire, and go with thee into the battle. I have courage and strength
enough to bear thy lance, to lead thy spare-horse, to be, above all,
thy shield-bearer--thy shield. Nothing shall touch thee but through
me--through this bosom, Rinaldo. Perhaps mischance may spare thee for
its sake. Not a word? not a little word? Do I dare to boast of what thou
hadst once a kind word for, though now thou wilt neither look upon me nor
speak to me? "
She could say no more: her words were suffocated by a torrent of tears.
But she sought to take his hand, to arrest him by his mantle--in vain.
He could scarcely, it is true, restrain his tears: but he did. He looked
sorrowful, but composed; and at length he said: "Armida, would I could do
as thou wishest; but I cannot. I would relieve thee instantly of all this
tumult of emotion. No hate is there in him that must quit thee; no such
disdain as thou fanciest; nothing but the melancholy and impetuous sense
of his duty. Thou hast erred, it is true--erred both in love and hate;
but have I not erred with thee? and can I find excuse which is not found
for thyself? Dear and honoured ever wilt thou be with Rinaldo, whether in
joy or sorrow. Count me, if it please thee, thy champion still, as far as
my country and my faith permit; but here, in this spot, must be buried
all else--buried, not for my sake only, but for that of thy beauty, thy
worthiness, thy royal blood. Consent to disparage thyself no longer.
Peace be with thee. I go where I have no permission to take thee with me.
Be happy; be wise. " While Rinaldo was speaking in this manner, Armida
changed colour; her bosom heaved; her eyes took a new kind of fire; scorn
rose upon her lip. When he finished, she looked at him with a bitterness
that rejected every word he had said; and then she exclaimed: "Thou hast
no such blood in thine own veins as thou canst fear to degrade. Thy
boasted descent is a fiction: base, and brutish, and insensible was thy
stock. What being of gentle blood could quit a love like mine without
even a tear--a sigh? What but the mockery of a man could call me his, and
yet leave me? vouchsafe me his pardon, as if I had offended him? excuse
my guilt and my tenderness; he, the sage of virtue, and me, the wretch! O
God! and these are the men that take upon them to slaughter the innocent,
and dictate faiths to the world! Go, hard heart, with such peace as thou
leavest in this bosom. Begone; take thine injustice from my sight for
ever. My spirit will follow thee, not as a help, but as a retribution.
I shall die first, and thou wilt die speedily: thou wilt perish in the
battle. Thou wilt lie expiring among the dead and bleeding, and wilt call
on Armida in thy last moments, and I shall hear it--yes, I shall hear it;
I shall look for that. "
Down fell Armida on the ground, senseless; and Rinaldo stood over her,
weeping at last. Open thine eyes, poor wretch, and see him. Alas, the
heavens deny thee the consolation! What will he do? Will he leave thee
lying there betwixt dead and alive? Or will he go--pitying thee, but
still going? He goes; he is gone; he is in the bark, and the wind is in
the sail; and he looks back--ever back; but still goes: the shore begins
to be out of sight.
Armida woke, and was alone. She raved again, but it was for vengeance.
In a few days she was with the Egyptian army, a queen at the head of her
vassals, going against the Christians at Jerusalem.
Part the Fifth.
THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE FOREST, AND THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM, &c.
Rinaldo arrived without loss of time in the Christian camp before
Jerusalem. Every body rejoiced to see the right hand of the army. Godfrey
gladly pardoned him; the hermit Peter blessed him; he himself retired to
beg the forgiveness and favour of Heaven; and then he went straight to
the Enchanted Forest.
It was a beautiful morning, and the forest, instead of presenting its
usual terrors, appeared to him singularly tranquil and pleasing. On
entering it he heard, not dreadful thunder-claps, but harmonies made
up of all sorts of gentle and lovely sounds--brooks, whispering winds,
nightingales, organs, harps, human voices. He went slowly and cautiously,
and soon came to a beautiful river which encircled the heart of the wood.
A bridge of gold carried him over. He had no sooner crossed it, than the
river higher up suddenly swelled and rushed like a torrent, sweeping
the bridge away. The harmony meanwhile had become silent. Admiring, but
nothing daunted, the hero went on.
Every thing as he advanced appeared to start into fresh beauty. His steps
produced lilies and roses; here leaped up a fountain, and there came
falling a cascade; the wood itself seemed to grow young as with sudden
spring; and he again heard the music and the human voices, though he
could see no one.
Passing through the trees, he came into a glade in the heart of the wood,
in the centre of which he beheld a myrtle-tree, the largest and most
beautiful ever seen: it was taller than a cypress or palm, and seemed the
queen of the forest. Looking around him, he observed to his astonishment
an oak suddenly cleave itself open, and out of it there came a nymph. A
hundred other trees did the same, giving birth to as many nymphs. They
were all habited as we see them in theatres; only, instead of bows and
arrows, each held a lute or guitar. Coming towards the hero with joyful
eyes, they formed a circle about him, and danced; and in their dancing
they sang, and bade him welcome to the haunt of their mistress, their
loving mistress, of whom he was the only hope and joy. Looking as they
spoke towards the myrtle, Rinaldo looked also, and beheld, issuing out of
it--Armida.
Armida came sweetly towards him, with a countenance at once grieving and
rejoicing, but expressing above all infinite affection. "And do I indeed
see thee again? " she said; "and wilt thou not fly me a second time? am
I visited to be consoled, or to be treated again as an enemy? is poor
Armida so formidable, that thou must needs close up thine helmet when
thou beholdest her? Thou mightest surely have vouchsafed her once more a
sight of thine eyes. Let us be friends, at least, if we may be nothing
more. Wilt thou not take her hand? "
Rinaldo's answer was, to turn away as from a cheat, to look towards the
myrtle-tree, to draw his sword, and proceed with manifest intentions of
assailing it. She ran before him shrieking, and hugged it round. "Nay,
thou wilt not," she said, "thou wilt not hurt my tree--not cut and slay
what is bound up with the life of Armida? Thy sword must pass first
through her bosom. "
Armida writhed and wailed; Rinaldo nevertheless raised his sword, and it
was coming against the tree, when her shape, like a thing in a dream,
was metamorphosed as quick as lightning.
