“How now, cousin!” cried Orlando; “have you too gone over to the enemy?”
“O, my lord and master, Orlando,” cried the other, “I ask your pardon, if I have struck you. I can see nothing—I am dying. The traitor Arcaliffe has stabbed me in the back; but I killed him for it. If you love me, lead my horse into the thick of them, so that I may not die unavenged.”
“I shall die myself before long,” said Orlando, “out of very toil and grief; so we will go together. I have lost all hope, all pride, all wish to live any longer; but not my love for Uliviero. Come—let us give them a few blows yet; let them see what you can do with your dying hands. One faith, one death, one only wish be ours.”
Orlando led his cousin’s horse where the press was thickest, and dreadful was the strength of the dying man and of his half-dying companion. They made a street, through which they passed out of the battle; and Orlando led his cousin away to his tent, and said, “Wait a little till I return, for I will go and sound the horn on the hill yonder.”
“’Tis of no use,” said Uliviero; “and my spirit is fast going, and desires to be with its Lord and Saviour.” He would have said more, but his words came from him imperfectly, like those of a man in a dream; only his cousin gathered that he meant to commend to him his sister, Orlando’s wife, Alda the Fair, of whom indeed the great Paladin had not thought so much in this world as he might have done. And with these imperfect words he expired.
But Orlando no sooner saw him dead, than he felt as if he was left alone on the earth; and he was quite willing to leave it; only he wished that Charles at St. John Pied de Port should hear how the case stood before he went; and so he took up the horn, and blew it three times with such force that the blood burst out of his nose and mouth. Turpin says, that at the third blast the horn broke in two.