He was then taken back to his own chamber.  Godfrey came in the mean time with the venerable hermit Peter; and when the sufferer awoke, they addressed him in kind words, which even his impatience respected; but it was not to be calmed till the preacher put on the terrors of religion, remonstrating with him as an ingrate to God, and threatening him with the doom of a sinner.  The tears then crept into his eyes, and he tried to be patient, and in some degree was so—­only breaking out ever and anon, now into exclamations of horror, and now into fond lamentations, talking as if with the shade of his beloved.

Thus lay Tancred for days together, ever woful; till, falling asleep one night towards the dawn, the shade of Clorinda did indeed appear to him, more beautiful than ever, and clad in light and joy.  She seemed to stoop and wipe the tears from his eyes; and then said, “Behold how happy I am.  Behold me, O beloved friend, and see how happy, and bright, and beautiful I am; and consider that it is all owing to thyself.  ’Twas thou that took’st me out of the false path, and made me worthy of admission among saints and angels.  There, in heaven, I love and rejoice; and there I look to see thee in thine appointed time; after which we shall both love the great God and one another for ever and ever.  Be faithful, and command thyself, and look to the end; for, lo, as far as it is permitted to a blessed spirit to love mortality, even now I love thee!”

With these words the eyes of the vision grew bright beyond mortal beauty; and then it turned and was hidden in the depth of its radiance, and disappeared.

Tancred slept a quiet sleep; and when he awoke, he gave himself patiently up to the will of the physician; and the remains of Clorinda were gathered into a noble tomb.[6]

[Footnote 1:  St. George.]

[Footnote 2:  This fiction of a white Ethiop child is taken from the Greek romance of Heliodorus, book the fourth.  The imaginative principle on which it is founded is true to physiology, and Tasso had a right to use it; but the particular and excessive instance does not appear happy in the eyes of a modern reader acquainted with the history of albinos.]

[Footnote 3:  The conceit is more antithetically put in the original

  “Ch’egli avria del candor che in te si vede
  Argomentato in lei non bianca fede.”

  Canto xii. st. 24.]

[Footnote 4:  The poet here compares his hero and heroine to two jealous

“bulls,” no happy comparison certainly.

  “Vansi a ritrovar non altrimenti
  Che duo tori gelosi.”  St. 53.]

[Footnote 5: 

“Qual l’alto Egeo, perche Aquilone o Noto
Cessi, che tutto prima il volse e scosse,
Non s’accheta pero, ma ’l suono e ’l moto
Ritien de l’onde anco agitate e grosse;
Tal, se ben manca in lor col sangue voto
Quel vigor che le braccia ai colpi mosse,
Serbano ancor l’impeto primo, e vanno
Da quel sospinti a giunger danno a danno.” 
Canto xii. st. 63.]