Yes, Medoro had the first gathering of the kiss off the lips of Angelica—­those lips never touched before—­that garden of roses on the threshold of which nobody ever yet dared to venture.  The love was headlong and irresistible; but the priest was called in to sanctify it; and the brideswoman of the daughter of Cathay was the wife of the cottager.  The lovers remained upwards of a month in the cottage.  Angelica could not bear her young husband out of her sight.  She was for ever gazing on him, and hanging on his neck.  In-doors and out-of-doors, day as well as night, she had him at her side.  In the morning or evening they wandered forth along the banks of some stream, or by the hedge-rows of some verdant meadow.  In the middle of the day they took refuge from the heat in a grotto that seemed made for lovers; and wherever, in their wanderings, they found a tree fit to carve and write on, by the side of fount or river, or even a slab of rock soft enough for the purpose, there they were sure to leave their names on the bark or marble; so that, what with the inscriptions in-doors and out-of-doors (for the walls of the cottage displayed them also), a visitor of the place could not have turned his eye in any direction without seeing the words

  “ANGELICA AND MEDORO”

written in as many different ways as true-lovers’ knots could run.[16]

Having thus awhile enjoyed themselves in the rustic solitude, the Queen of Cathay (for in the course of her adventures in Christendom she had succeeded to her father’s crown) thought it time to return to her beautiful empire, and complete the triumph of love by crowning Medoro king of it.

She took leave of the cottagers with a princely gift.  The islanders of Ebuda had deprived her of every thing valuable but a rich bracelet, which, for some strange, perhaps superstitious, reason, they left on her arm.  This she took off, and made a present of it to the good couple for their hospitality; and so bade them farewell.

The bracelet was of inimitable workmanship, adorned with gems, and had been given by the enchantress Morgana to a favourite youth, who was rescued from her wiles by Orlando.  The youth, in gratitude, bestowed it on his preserver; and the hero had humbly presented it to Angelica, who vouchsafed to accept it, not because of the giver, but for the rarity of the gift.

The happy bride and bridegroom, bidding farewell to France, proceeded by easy journeys, and crossed the mountains into Spain, where it was their intention to take ship for the Levant.  Descending the Pyrenees, they discerned the ocean in the distance, and had now reached the coast, and were proceeding by the water-side along the high road to Barcelona, when they beheld a miserable-looking creature, a madman, all over mud and dirt, lying naked in the sands.  He had buried himself half inside them for shelter from the sun; but having observed the lovers as they came along, he leaped out of his hole like a dog, and came raging against them.