But, before I proceed to relate who this madman was, I must return to the cottage which the two lovers had occupied, and recount what passed in it during the interval between their bidding it adieu and their arrival in this place.

PART THE THIRD

THE JEALOUSY OF ORLANDO.

During the course of his search for Angelica, the County Orlando had just restored two lovers to one another, and was pursuing a Pagan enemy to no purpose through a wild and tangled wood, when he came into a beautiful spot by a river’s side, which tempted him to rest himself from the heat.  It was a small meadow, full of daisies and butter-cups, and surrounded with trees.  There was an air abroad, notwithstanding the heat, which made the shepherds glad to sit without their jerkins, and receive the coolness on their naked bodies:  even the hard-skinned cattle were glad of it; and Orlando, who was armed cap-a-pie, was delighted to take off his helmet, and lay aside his buckler, and repose awhile in the midst of a scene so refreshing.  Alas! it was the unhappiest moment of his life.

Casting his eyes around him, while about to get off his horse, he observed a handwriting on many of the trees which he thought he knew.  Riding up to the trees, and looking more closely, he was sure he knew it; and in truth it was no other than that of his adored mistress Angelica, and the inscription one of those numerous inscriptions of which I have spoken.  The spot was one of the haunts of the lovers while they abode in the shepherd’s cottage.  Wherever the County turned his eyes, he beheld, tied together in true-lovers’ knots, nothing but the words

  “ANGELICA AND MEDORO.”

All the trees had them—­his eyes could see nothing else; and every letter was a dagger that pierced his heart.

The unhappy lover tried in vain to disbelieve what he saw.  He endeavoured to compel himself to think that it was some other Angelica who had written the words; but he knew the handwriting too well.  Too often had he dwelt upon it, and made himself familiar with every turn of the letters.  He then strove to fancy that “Medoro” was a feigned name, intended for himself; but he felt that he was trying to delude himself, and that the more he tried, the bitterer was his conviction of the truth.  He was like a bird fixing itself only the more deeply in the lime in which it is caught, by struggling and beating its wings.

Orlando turned his horse away in his anguish, and paced it towards a grotto covered with vine and ivy, which he looked into.  The grotto, both outside and in, was full of the like inscriptions.  It was the retreat the lovers were so fond of at noon.  Their names were written on all sides of it, some in chalk and coal,[17] others carved with a knife.