At length the beauty arrived in her own veritable person.  She was again on horseback, and once more on the look-out for a knight who should conduct her safely home—­whether Orlando or Sacripant she had not determined.  The same road which had brought Ruggiero to the enchanted house having done as much for her, she now entered it invisibly by means of the ring.

Finding both the knights in the place, and feeling under the necessity of coming to a determination respecting one or the other, Angelica made up her mind in favour of King Sacripant, whom she reckoned to be more at her disposal.  Contriving therefore to meet him by himself, she took the ring out of her mouth, and suddenly appeared before him.  He had hardly recovered from his amazement, when Ferragus and Orlando himself came up; and as Angelica now was visible to all, she took occasion to deliver them from the enchanted house by hastening before them into a wood.  They all followed of course, in a frenzy of anxiety and delight; but the lady being perplexed with the presence of the whole three, and recollecting that she had again obtained possession of her ring, resolved to trust her safe conduct to invisibility alone; so, in the old fashion, she left them to new quarrels by suddenly vanishing from their eyes.  She stopped, nevertheless, a while to laugh at them, as they all turned their stupefied faces hither and thither; then suffered them to pass her in a blind thunder of pursuit; and so, gently following at her leisure on the same road, took her way towards the East.

It was a long journey, and she saw many places and people, and was now hidden and now seen, like the moon, till she calve one day into a forest near the walls of Paris, where she beheld a youth lying wounded on the grass, between two companions that were dead.

Part the Second.

ANGELICA AND MEDORO.

Now, in order to understand who the youth was that Angelica found lying on the grass between the two dead companions, and how he came to be so lying, you must know that a great battle had been fought there between Charlemagne and the Saracens, in which the latter were defeated, and that these three people belonged to the Saracens.  The two that were slain were Dardinel, king of Zumara, and Cloridan, one of his followers; and the wounded survivor was another, whose name was Medoro.  Cloridan and Medoro had been loving and grateful servants of Dardinel, and very fast friends of one another; such friends, indeed, that on their own account, as well as in honour of what they did for their master, their history deserves a particular mention.

They were of a lowly stock on the coast of Syria, and in all the various fortunes of their lord had shewn him a special attachment.  Cloridan had been bred a huntsman, and was the robuster person of the two.  Medoro was in the first bloom of youth, with a complexion rosy and fair, and a most pleasant as well as beautiful countenance.  He had black eyes, and hair that ran into curls of gold; in short, looked like a very angel from heaven.