Astolfo would fain have gone deeper into the jaws of Hell, but the smoke grew so thick and palpable, it was impossible to move a step farther.  Turning about, therefore, he regained the entrance; and having refreshed himself in a fountain hard by, and re-mounted the hippogriff, felt an inclination to ascend as high as he possibly could in the air.  The excessive loftiness of the mountain above the cavern made him think that its top could be at no great distance from the region of the Moon; and accordingly he pushed his horse upwards, and rose and rose, till at length he found himself on its table-land.  It exhibited a region of celestial beauty.  The flowers were like beds of precious stones for colour and brightness; the grass, if you could have brought any to earth, would have been found to surpass emeralds; and the trees, whose leaves were no less beautiful, were in fruit and flower at once.  Birds of as many colours were singing in the branches; the murmuring rivulets and dumb lakes were more limpid than crystal:  a sweet air was for ever stirring, which reduced the warmth to a gentle temperature; and every breath of it brought an odour from flowers, fruit-trees, and herbage all at once, which nourished the soul with sweetness.[5]

In the middle of this lonely plain was a palace radiant as fire.  Astolfo rode his horse round about it, constantly admiring all he saw, and filled with increasing astonishment; for he found that the dwelling was thirty miles in circuit, and composed of one entire carbuncle, lucid and vermilion.  What became of the boasted wonders of the world before this?  The world itself, in the comparison, appeared but a lump of brute and fetid matter.[6]

As the Paladin approached the vestibule, he was met by a venerable old man, clad in a white gown and red mantle, whose beard descended on his bosom, and whose aspect announced him as one of the elect of Paradise.  It was St. John the Evangelist, who lived in that mansion with Enoch and Elijah, the only three mortals who never tasted death; for the place, as the saint informed him, was the Terrestrial Paradise; and the inhabitants were to live there till the angelical trumpet announced the coming of Christ “on the white cloud.”  The Paladin, he said, had been allowed to visit it, by the favour of God, for the purpose of fetching away to earth the lost wits of Orlando, which the champion of the Church had been deprived of for loving a Pagan, and which had been attracted out of his brains to the neighbouring sphere, the Moon.

Accordingly, after the new friends had spent two days in discourse, and meals had been served up, consisting of fruit so exquisite that the Paladin could not help thinking our first parents had some excuse for eating it,[7] the Evangelist, when the Moon arose, took him into the car which had borne Elijah to heaven; and four horses, redder than fire, conveyed them to the lunar world.

The mortal visitant was amazed to see in the Moon a world resembling his own, full of wood and water, and containing even cities and castles, though of a different sort from ours.  It was strange to find a sphere so large which had seemed so petty afar off; and no less strange was it to look down on the world he had left, and be compelled to knit his brows and look sharply before he could well discern it, for it happened at the time to want light.[8]