“Prasildo,” said she, “if you love me, listen to me.  You have often told me that you do so.  Now prove it.  I happen to be threatened with nothing less than the loss of life and honour.  Nothing short of such a calamity could have induced me to beg of you the service I am going to request; since there is no greater shame in the world than to ask favours from those to whom we have refused them.  But I now promise you, that if you do what I desire, your love shall be returned.  I give you my word for it.  I give you my honour.  On the other side of the wilds of Barbary is a garden which has a wall of iron.  It has four gates.  Life itself keeps one; Death another; Poverty the third; the fairy of Riches the fourth.  He who goes in at one gate must go out at the other opposite; and in the midst of the garden is a tree, tall as the reach of an arrow, which produces pearls for blossoms.  It is called the Tree of Wealth, and has fruit of emeralds and boughs of gold.  I must have a bough of that tree, or suffer the most painful consequences.  Now, then, if you love me, I say, prove it.  Prove it, and most assuredly I shall love you in turn, better than ever you loved myself.”

What need of saying that Prasildo, with haste and joy, undertook to do all that she required?  If she had asked the sun and stars, and the whole universe, he would have promised them.  Quitting her in spite of his love, he set out on the journey without delay, only dressing himself before he left the city in the habit of a pilgrim.

Now you must know, that Iroldo and his lady had set Prasildo on that adventure, in the hope that the great distance which he would have to travel, and the change which it might assist time to produce, would deliver him from his passion.  At all events, in case this good end was not effected before he arrived at the garden, they counted to a certainty on his getting rid of it when he did; because the fairy of that garden, which was called the Garden of Medusa, was of such a nature, that whosoever did but look on her countenance forgot the reason for his going thither; and whoever saluted, touched, and sat down to converse by her side, forgot all that had ever occurred in his lifetime.

Away, however, on his steed went our bold lover; all alone, or rather with Love for his companion; and so, riding hard till he came to the Red Sea, he took ship, and journeyed through Egypt, and came to the mountains of Barca, where he overtook an old grey-headed palmer.

Prasildo told the palmer the reason of his coming, and the palmer told him what the reader has heard about the garden; adding, that he must enter by the gate of Poverty, and take no arms or armour with him, excepting a looking-glass for a shield, in which the fairy might behold her beauty.  The old man gave him other directions necessary for his passing out of the gate of Riches; and Prasildo, thanking him, went on, and in thirty days found himself entering the garden with the greatest ease, by the gate of Poverty.