“No, no!” cried he, “I am not the man they take me for!  Orlando is dead!  I am only the wandering ghost of that unhappy Count, who is now suffering the torments of hell!”

Orlando wandered all night, as chance directed, through the wood, and at sunrise his destiny led him to the fountain where Medoro had engraved the fatal inscription.  The frantic paladin saw it a second time with fury, drew his sword, and hacked it from the rock.

Unlucky grotto! you shall no more attract by your shade and coolness, you shall no more shelter with your arch either shepherd or flock.  And you, fresh and pure fountain, you may not escape the rage of the furious Orlando!  He cast into the fountain branches, trunks of trees which he tore up, pieces of rocks which he broke off, plants uprooted, with the earth adhering, and turf and brushes, so as to choke the fountain, and destroy the purity of its waters.  At length, exhausted by his violent exertions, bathed in sweat, breathless, Orlando sunk panting upon the earth, and lay there insensible three days and three nights.

The fourth day he started up and seized his arms.  His helmet, his buckler, he cast far from him; his hauberk and his clothes he rent asunder; the fragments were scattered through the wood.  In fine, he became a furious madman.  His insanity was such that he cared not to retain even his sword.  But he had no need of Durindana, nor of other arms, to do wonderful things.  His prodigious strength sufficed.  At the first wrench of his mighty arm he tore up a pine-tree by the roots.  Oaks, beeches, maples, whatever he met in his path, yielded in like manner.  The ancient forest soon became as bare as the borders of a morass, where the fowler has cleared away the bushes to spread his nets.  The shepherds, hearing the horrible crashing in the forest, abandoned their flocks to run and see the cause of this unwonted uproar.  By their evil star, or for their sins, they were led thither.  When they saw the furious state the Count was in, and his incredible force, they would fain have fled out of his reach, but in their fears lost their presence of mind.  The madman pursued them, seized one and rent him limb from limb, as easily as one would pull ripe apples from a tree.  He took another by the feet, and used him as a club to knock down a third.  The shepherds fled; but it would have been hard for any to escape, if he had not at that moment left them to throw himself with the same fury upon their flocks.  The peasants, abandoning their ploughs and harrows, mounted on the roofs of buildings and pinnacles of the rocks, afraid to trust themselves even to the oaks and pines.  From such heights they looked on, trembling at the raging fury of the unhappy Orlando.  His fists, his teeth, his nails, his feet, seize, break, and tear cattle, sheep, and swine; the most swift in flight alone being able to escape him.

When at last terror had scattered everything before him, he entered a cottage which was abandoned by its inhabitants, and there found that which served for food.  His long fast had caused him to feel the most ravenous hunger.  Seizing whatever he found that was eatable, whether roots, acorns, or bread, raw meat or cooked, he gorged it indiscriminately.