“Learned or not learned,” said Agrican, “you might show yourself better bred than by endeavoring to make me talk on a subject on which you have me at a disadvantage.  If you choose to sleep I wish you good night; but if you prefer talking I recommend you to talk of fighting or of fair ladies.  And, by the way, pray tell me, are you not that Orlando who makes such a noise in the world?  And what is it, pray, that brings you into these parts?  Were you ever in love?  I suppose you must have been; for to be a knight, and never to have been in love, would be like being a man without a heart in his breast.”

The count replied:  “Orlando I am, and in love I am.  Love has made me abandon everything, and brought me into these distant regions, and, to tell you all in one word, my heart is in the hands of the daughter of King Galafron.  You have come against him with fire and sword, to get possession of his castles and his dominions; and I have come to help him, for no object in the world but to please his daughter and win her beautiful hand.  I care for nothing else in existence.”

Now when the Tartar king, Agrican, heard his antagonist speak in this manner, and knew him to be indeed Orlando, and to be in love with Angelica, his face changed color for grief and jealousy, though it could not be seen for the darkness.  His heart began beating with such violence that he felt as if he should have died.  “Well,” said he to Orlando, “we are to fight when it is daylight, and one or other is to be left here, dead on the ground.  I have a proposal to make to you—­nay, an entreaty.  My love is so excessive for the same lady that I beg you to leave her to me.  I will owe you my thanks, and give up the siege and put an end to the war.  I cannot bear that any one should love her, and that I should live to see it.  Why, therefore, should either of us perish?  Give her up.  Not a soul shall know it.”

“I never yet,” answered Orlando, “made a promise which I did not keep, and nevertheless I own to you that, were I to make a promise like that, and even swear to keep it, I should not.  You might as well ask me to tear away the limbs from my body, and the eyes out of my head.  I could as well live without breath itself as cease loving Angelica.”

Agrican had hardly patience to let him finish speaking, ere he leapt furiously on horseback, though it was midnight.  “Quit her,” said he, “or die!”

Orlando seeing the infidel getting up, and not being sure that he would not add treachery to fierceness, had been hardly less quick in mounting for the combat.  “Never,” exclaimed he; “I never could have quitted her if I would, and now I would not if I could.  You must seek her by other means than these.”

Fiercely dashed their horses together, in the nighttime, on the green mead.  Despiteful and terrible were the blows they gave and took by the moonlight.  Agrican fought in a rage, Orlando was cooler.  And now the struggle had lasted more than five hours, and day began to dawn, when the Tartar king, furious to find so much trouble given him, dealt his enemy a blow sharp and violent beyond conception.  It cut the shield in two as if it had been made of wood, and, though blood could not be drawn from Orlando, because he was fated, it shook and bruised him as if it had started every joint in his body.