The knights passed through the gates of the park of Armida, and entered a labyrinth made with contrivance the most intricate.  Here their path would have been lost, but for a map traced by one who knew the secret.  By the help of this they threaded it in safety, and issued upon a garden beautiful beyond conception.  Every thing that could be desired in gardens was presented to their eyes in one landscape, and yet without contradiction or confusion,—­flowers, fruits, water, sunny hills, descending woods, retreats into corners and grottos:  and what put the last loveliness upon the scene was, that the art which did it all was no where discernible.[9] You might have supposed (so exquisitely was the wild and the cultivated united) that all had somehow happened, not been contrived.  It seemed to be the art of Nature herself; as though, in a fit of playfulness, she had imitated her imitator.  But the temperature of the place, if nothing else, was plainly the work of magic, for blossoms and fruit abounded at the same time.  The ripe and the budding fig grew on the same bough; green apples were clustered upon those with red cheeks; the vines in one place had small leaves and hard little grapes, and in the next they laid forth their richest tapestry in the sun, heavy with bunches full of wine.  At one time you listened to the warbling of birds; and a minute after, as if they had stopped on purpose, nothing was heard but the whispering of winds and the fall of waters.  It seemed as if every thing in the place contributed to the harmony and the sweetness.  The notes of the turtle-dove were deeper here than any where else; the hard oak, and the chaste laurel, and the whole exuberant family of trees, the earth, the water, every element of creation, seemed to have been compounded but for one object, and to breathe forth the fulness of its bliss.[10]

The two messengers, hardening their souls with all their might against the enchanting impression, moved forward silently among the trees; till, looking through the branches into a little opening which formed a bower, they saw—­or did they but think they saw?—­no, they saw indeed the hero and his Armida reclining on the grass.[11] Her dress was careless, her hair loose in the summer-wind.  His head lay in her bosom; a smile trembled on her lips and in her eyes, like a sunbeam in water; and as she thus looked on him with passionate love, he looked up at her, face to face, and returned it with all his soul.

Now she kissed his lips, now his eyes; and then they looked again at one another with their ever-hungry looks; and then she kissed him again, and he gave a sigh so deep you would have thought his soul had gone out of him, and passed into hers.  The two warriors from their covert gazed on the loving scene.