The Paladin and the giant quitted the abbey, the one on horseback and the other on foot, and journeyed through the desert till they came to a magnificent castle, the door of which stood open.  They entered, and found rooms furnished in the most splendid manner—­beds covered with cloth of gold, and floors rejoicing in variegated marbles.  There was even a feast prepared in the saloon, but nobody to eat it, or to speak to them.

Orlando suspected some trap, and did not quite like it; but Morgante thought nothing worth considering but the feast.  “Who cares for the host,” said he, “when there’s such a dinner?  Let us eat as much as we can, and bear off the rest.  I always do that when I have the picking of castles.”

They accordingly sat down, and being very hungry with their day’s journey, devoured heaps of the good things before them, eating with all the vigour of health, and drinking to a pitch of weakness.[3] They sat late in this manner enjoying themselves, and then retired for the night into rich beds.

But what was their astonishment in the morning at finding that they could not get out of the place!  There was no door.  All the entrances had vanished, even to any feasible window.

“We must be dreaming,” said Orlando.

“My dinner was no dream, I’ll swear,” said the giant.  “As for the rest, let it be a dream if it pleases.”

Continuing to search up and down, they at length found a vault with a tomb in it; and out of the tomb came a voice, saying, “You must encounter with me, or stay here for ever.  Lift, therefore, the stone that covers me.”

“Do you hear that?” said Morgante; “I’ll have him out, if it’s the devil himself.  Perhaps it’s two devils, Filthy-dog and Foul-mouth, or Itching and Evil-tail."[4]

“Have him out,” said Orlando, “whoever he is, even were it as many devils as were rained out of heaven into the centre.”

Morgante lifted up the stone, and out leaped, surely enough, a devil in the likeness of a dried-up dead body, black as a coal.  Orlando seized him, and the devil grappled with Orlando.  Morgante was for joining him, but the Paladin bade him keep back.  It was a hard struggle, and the devil grinned and laughed, till the giant, who was a master of wrestling, could bear it no longer:  so he doubled him up, and, in spite of all his efforts, thrust him back into the tomb.

“You’ll never get out,” said the devil, “if you leave me shut up.”

“Why not?” inquired the Paladin.

“Because your giant’s baptism and my deliverance must go together,” answered the devil.  “If he is not baptised, you can have no deliverance; and if I am not delivered, I can prevent it still, take my word for it.”

Orlando baptised the giant.  The two companions then issued forth, and hearing a mighty noise in the house, looked back, and saw it all vanished.