This story, like that of the Saracen Friends, is told by a damsel to a knight while riding in his company; with this difference, that she is the heroine of it herself.  She is a damsel of a nature still lighter than the former; and the reader’s sympathy with the trouble she brings on herself, and the way she gets out of it, will be modified accordingly.  On the other hand, nobody can respect the foolish old man with his unwarrantable marriage; and the moral of Boiardo’s story is still useful for these “enlightened times,” though conveyed with an air of levity.

In addition to the classics, the poet has been to the Norman fablers for his story.  The subterranean passage has been more than once repeated in romance; and the closing incident, the assistance given by the husband to his wife’s elopement, has been imitated in the farce of Lionel and Clarissa.

SEEING AND BELIEVING.

My father (said the damsel) is King of the Distant Islands, where the treasure of the earth is collected.  Never was greater wealth known, and I was heiress of it all.

But it is impossible to foresee what is most to be desired for us in this world.  I was a king’s daughter, I was rich, I was handsome, I was lively; and yet to all those advantages I owed my ill-fortune.

Among other suitors for my hand there came two on the same day, one of whom was a youth named Ordauro, handsome from head to foot; the other an old man of seventy, whose name was Folderico.  Both were rich and of noble birth; but the greybeard was counted extremely wise, and of a foresight more than human.  As I did not feel in want of his foresight, the youth was far more to my taste; and accordingly I listened to him with perfect good-will, and gave the wise man no sort of encouragement.  I was not at liberty, however, to determine the matter; my father had a voice in it; so, fearing what he would advise, I thought to secure a good result by cunning and management.  It is an old observation, that the craft of a woman exceeds all other craft.  Indeed, it is Solomon’s own saying.  But now-a-days people laugh at it; and I found to my cost that the laugh is just.  I requested my father to proclaim, first, that nobody should have me in marriage who did not surpass me in swiftness (for I was a damsel of a mighty agility); and secondly, that he who did surpass me should be my husband.  He consented, and I thought my happiness secure.  You must know, I have run down a bird, and caught it with my own hand.

Well, both my suitors came to the race; the youth on a large war-horse, trapped with gold, which curvetted in a prodigious manner, and seemed impatient for a gallop; the old roan on a mule, carrying a great bag at his side, and looking already tired out.  They dismounted on the place chosen for the trial, which was a meadow.  It was encircled by a world of spectators; and the greybeard and myself (for his age gave him the first chance) only waited for the sound of the trumpet to set off.