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.