Orlando had never shewn such anger in his countenance as he did that day.  He dashed at Falseron with a fury so swift, and at the same time a mastery of his lance so marvellous, that though he plunged it in the man’s body so as instantly to kill him, the body did not move in the saddle.  The hero himself, as he rushed onwards, was fain to see the end of a stroke so perfect, and, turning his horse back, he touched the carcass with his sword, and it fell on the instant.  They say, that it had no sooner fallen than it disappeared.  People got off their horses to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being left; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found as empty as the shell that is cast by a lobster.  O new, and strange, and portentous event!—­proof manifest of the anger with which God regards treachery.

When the first infidel army beheld their leader dead, such fear fell upon them, that they were for leaving the field to the Paladins; but they were unable.  Marsilius had drawn the rest of his forces round the valley like a net, so that their shoulders were turned in vain.  Orlando rode into the thick of them, with Count Anselm by his side.  He rushed like a tempest; and wherever he went, thunderbolts fell upon helmets.  The Paladins drove here and there after them, each making a whirlwind round about him, and a bloody circle.  Uliviero was again in the melee; and Walter of Amulion threw himself into it; and Baldwin roared like a lion; and Avino and Avolio reaped the wretches’ heads like a turnip-field; and blows blinded men’s eyes; and Archbishop Turpin himself had changed his crozier for a lance, and chased a new flock before him to the mountains.

Yet what could be done against foes without number?  Multitudes fill up the spaces left by the dead without stopping.  Marsilius, from his anxious and raging post, constantly pours them in.  The Paladins are as units to thousands.  Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto?

The horses did not tarry; but fate had been quicker than enchantment.  Ashtaroth, nevertheless, had presented himself to Rinaldo in Egypt, as though he had issued out of a flash of lightning.  After telling his mission, and giving orders to hundreds of invisible spirits round about him (for the air was full of them), he and Foul-Mouth, his servant, entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh and snort and leap with the fiends within them, till off they flew through the air over the pyramids, crowds of spirits going like a tempest before them.  Ricciardetto shut his eyes at first, on perceiving himself so high in the air; but he speedily became used to it, though he looked down on the sun at last.  In this manner they passed the desert, and the sea-coast, and the ocean, and swept the tops of the Pyrenees, Ashtaroth talking to them of wonders by the way; for he was one of the wisest of the devils, and knew a great many things which were then unknown to man.  He laughed, for instance, as they went over sea, at the notion, among other vain fancies, that nothing was to be found beyond the pillars of Hercules; “for,” said he, “the earth is round, and the sea has an even surface all over it; and there are nations on the other side of the globe, who walk with their feet opposed to yours, and worship other gods than the Christians.”