The traitor Gan, for the fiftieth time, had secretly brought the infidels from all quarters against his friend and master, the Emperor Charles; and Charles, by the help of Orlando, had conquered them all.  The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court of France tribute; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited in this particular instance, and his known villany at all times, had succeeded in persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando.  Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too; but the one was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes.  The traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying him to write if he had any thing to say before the arrangements with Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his villany was manifest to every one but the old monarch.  He fastened with equal tenderness on Uliviero, who smiled contemptuously in his face, and thought to himself, “You may make as many fair speeches as you choose, but you lie.”  All the other Paladins who were present thought the same and they said as much to the emperor; adding, that on no account should Gan be sent ambassador to Marsilius.  But Charles was infatuated.  His beard and his credulity had grown old together.

Gan was received with great honour in Spain by Marsilius.  The king, attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Saragossa to meet him, and then conducted him into the city amid tumults of delight.  There was nothing for several days but balls, and games, and exhibitions of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French knights, and the people shouting “France!  France!  Mountjoy and St. Denis!”

Gan made a speech, “like a Demosthenes,” to King Marsilius in public; but he made him another in private, like nobody but himself.  The king and he were sitting in a garden; they were traitors both, and began to understand, from one another’s looks, that the real object of the ambassador was yet to be discussed.  Marsilius accordingly assumed a more than usually cheerful and confidential aspect; and, taking his visitor by the hand, said, “You know the proverb, Mr. Ambassador—­’At dawn, the mountain; afternoon, the fountain.’  Different things at different hours.  So here is a fountain to accommodate us.”

It was a very beautiful fountain, so clear that you saw your face in it as in a mirror; and the spot was encircled with fruit-trees that quivered with the fresh air.  Gan praised it very much, contriving to insinuate, on one subject, his satisfaction with the glimpses he got into another.  Marsilius understood him; and as he resumed the conversation, and gradually encouraged a mutual disclosure of their thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was