to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle.  The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man’s helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when life forsook him.  Rinaldo then took off his own helmet; and the king, who had seen the great Paladin before, and who felt more rejoiced at his daughter’s deliverance than if he had lost and regained his crown, lifted up his hands to heaven, and thanked God for having honoured her innocence with so illustrious a defender.

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

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

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