He did not die.  He summoned up all the powers within him to support his heart for that moment.  He resolved to hold up his duty above his misery, and give life with the sweet water to her whom he had slain with sword.  He dipped his fingers in it, and marked her forehead with the cross, and repeated the words of the sacred office; and while he was repeating them, the sufferer changed countenance for joy, and smiled, and seemed to say, in the cheerfulness of her departure, “The heavens are opening—­I go in peace.”  A paleness and a shade together then came over her countenance, as if lilies had been mixed with violets.  She looked up at heaven, and heaven itself might be thought for very tenderness to be looking at her; and then she raised a little her hand towards that of the knight (for she could not speak), and so gave it him in sign of goodwill; and with his pressure of it her soul passed away, and she seemed asleep.

But Tancred no sooner beheld her dead, than all the strength of mind which he had summoned up to support him fell flat on the instant.  He would have given way to the most frantic outcries; but life and speech seemed to be shut up in one point in his heart; despair seized him like death, and he fell senseless beside her.  And surely he would have died indeed, had not a party of his countrymen happened to come up.  They were looking for water, and had found it, and they discovered the bodies at the same time.  The leader knew Tancred by his arms.  The beautiful body of Clorinda, though he deemed her a Pagan, he would not leave exposed to the wolves; so he directed them both to be carried to the pavilion of Tancred, and there placed in separate chambers.

Dreadful was the waking of Tancred—­not for the solemn whispering around him—­not for his aching wounds, terrible as they were,—­but for the agony of the recollection that rushed upon him.  He would have gone staggering out of the pavilion to seek the remains of his Clorinda, and save them from the wolves; but his friends told him they were at hand, under the curtain of his own tent.  A gleam of pleasure shot across his face, and be staggered into the chamber; but when he beheld the body gored with his own hand, and the face, calm indeed, but calm like a pale night without stars, he trembled so, that he would have sunk to the ground but for his supporters.

“O sweet face!” he exclaimed; “thou mayst be calm now; but what is to calm me?  O hand that was held up to me in sign of peace and forgiveness! to what have I brought thee?  Wretch that I am, I do not even weep.  Mine eyes are as cruel as my hands.  My blood shall be shed instead.”

And with these words he began tearing off the bandages which the surgeons had put upon him; and he thrust his fingers into his wounds, and would have slain himself thus outright, had not the pain made him faint away.