She had not yet passed the gates, when Malagigi the enchanter consulted his books; and that no means might be wanting to complete the counteraction of what he suspected, he summoned to his aid three spirits out of the lower regions.  But how serious his look turned, how his very soul within him was shaken, when he discovered that the most dreadful disasters hung over Charles and his court, and that the sister of the pretended Uberto was daughter of King Galafron of Cathay, a beauty accomplished in every species of enchantment, and sent there by her father on purpose to betray them all!  Her brother’s name was not Uberto, but Argalia.  Galafron had given him a horse swifter than the wind, an enchanted sword, a golden lance, also enchanted, which overthrew all whom it touched,[3] and a ring of a virtue so extraordinary, that if put into the mouth, it rendered the person invisible, and if worn on the finger, nullified every enchantment.  But beyond even all this, he gave him his sister for a companion; rightly judging, that every body that saw her would fall into the proposal of the joust; and trusting that, at the close of it, she would bring him the whole court of France into Cathay, prisoners in her hands.

Such, Malagigi discovered, was the plot of the accursed infidel hound, King Galafron.[4]

Meantime the pretended Uberto had returned to his station at the Horseblock of Merlin.  He had had a beautiful pavilion pitched there; and under this pavilion he lay down awhile to refresh himself with sleep.  His sister Angelica lay down also, but in the open air, under the great pine by the fountain.  The four giants kept watch:  and as she lay thus asleep, with her fair head on the grass, she appeared like an angel come down from heaven.

By this time Malagigi, borne by one of his demons, had arrived in the same place.  He saw the beauty asleep by the flowery water, and the four giants all wide awake; and he said within his teeth,—­” Brute scoundrels, I will take every one of you into my net without a blow.”

Malagigi took his book, and cast a spell out of it; and in an instant the whole four giants were buried in sleep.  Then, drawing his sword, he softly approached the young lady, intending to despatch her as quickly:  but seeing her look so lovely as she slept, he paused, and considered within himself, and resolved to detain her in the same state by enchantment, so long as it should please him.  Laying down the naked sword in the grass, he again took his book, and read and read on, and still read on, and fancied he was locking up her senses all the while in a sleep unwakeable.  But the ring of which I have spoken was on her finger.  She had borrowed it of her brother; and a superior power rendered all other magic of no avail.  A touch from Malagigi to prove the force of his spell awoke her, to the magician’s consternation, with a great cry.  She fled into the arms of her brother, whom it aroused; and, by the help of his sister’s knowledge of enchantment, Argalia mastered and bound the magician.  The book was then turned against him, and the place was suddenly filled with a crowd of his own demons, every one of them crying out to Angelica, “What commandest thou?”