The Paladin, more dead than alive, lay helpless among the flowers, when a fourth nymph came up to him, of inexpressible beauty.  She told him that he had grievously offended the naked youth, who was no other than Love himself; and added, that his only remedy was to be penitent, and to drink of the waters of a stream hard by, which he would find running from the roots of an olive-tree and a pine.  With these words, she vanished in her turn like the rest; and Rinaldo, dragging himself as well as he could to the olive and pine, stooped down, and greedily drank of the water.  Again and again he drank, and wished still to be drinking, for it took not only all pain out of his limbs, but all hate and bitterness out of his soul, and produced such a remorseful and doating memory of Angelica, that he would fain have galloped that instant to Cathay, and prostrated himself at her feet.  By degrees he knew the place; and looking round about him, and preparing to remount his horse, he discerned a knight and a lady in the distance.  The knight was in a coat of armour unknown to him, and the lady kneeling and drinking at a fountain, which was the one that had formerly quenched his own thirst; to wit, the Fountain of Disdain.

Alas! it was Angelica herself; and the knight was Orlando.  She had allowed him to bring her into France, ostensibly for the purpose of wedding him at the court of Charlemagne, whither the hero’s assistance had been called against Agramant king of the Moors, but secretly with the object of discovering Rinaldo.  Rinaldo, behold! is discovered; but the fatal averse water has been drunk, and Angelica now hates him in turn, as cordially as he detested her.  In vain he accosted her in the humblest and most repentant manner, calling himself the unworthiest of mankind, and entreating to be allowed to love her.  Orlando, disclosing himself, fiercely interrupted him; and a combat so terrific ensued, that Angelica fled away on her palfrey till she came to a large plain, in which she beheld an army encamped.

The army was Charlemagne’s, who had come to meet Rodamonte, one of the vassals of Agramant.  Angelica, in a tremble, related how she had left the two Paladins fighting in the wood; and Charlemagne, who was delighted to find Orlando so near him, proceeded thither with his lords, and parting the combatants by his royal authority, suppressed the dispute between them for the present, by consigning the object of their contention to the care of Namo duke of Bavaria, with the understanding that she was to be the prize of the warrior who should best deserve her in the approaching battle with the infidels.

[This is the last we hear of Angelica in the unfinished poem of Boiardo.  For the close of her history see its continuation by Ariosto in the present volume.]

[Footnote 1:  “Con parlar basso e bei ragionamenti.”]

[Footnote 2:  Video meliora, proboque, &c. Writers were now beginning to pride themselves on their classical reading.  The present occasion, it must be owned, was a very good one for introducing the passage from Horace.  The previous words have an affecting ingenuousness; and, indeed, the whole stanza is beautiful: