sight it was to
the Christians. Waked up, they came crowding to the place; and the two
companions, notwithstanding their skill and audacity, were compelled to
make a retreat. The besieged, with the king at their head, now arrived
also, crowding on the walls; and the gate was opened to let the
adventurers in. The Soldan issued forth at the same moment to cover the
retreat. Argantes was forced through the gate by Clorinda in spite of
himself; and she, but for a luckless antagonist, would have followed him;
but a soldier aiming at her a last blow, she rushed back to give the man
his death; and, in the confusion of the moment, the warders, believing
her to have entered, shut up the gate, and the heroine was left without.

Behind Clorinda was the gate--before and round about her was a host of
foes; and surely at that moment she thought that her life was drawing to
its end. Finding, however, that her dark armour befriended her in
the tumult, she mingled with the enemy as though she had been one of
themselves, and so, by degrees, picked her way through the confusion
caused by the fire. As the wolf, with its bloody mouth, seeks covert
in the woods, even so Clorinda got clear out of the multitude into the
darkness and the open country.

Not, however, so clear, alas, but that Tancred perceived her--Tancred,
her foe in creed, but her adoring lover, whose heart she had conquered in
the midst of strife, and whose passion for her she knew. But now she knew
not that he had seen her; nor did he, poor valiant wretch, know that
the knight in black armour whom he pursued, was a woman, and Clorinda.
Tancred had seen the warrior strike down the assailant at the gate; he
had watched him as he picked his way to escape; and Clorinda now heard
the unknown Tancred coming swiftly on horseback behind her as she was
speeding round towards another gate in hopes of being let in.

The heroine at length turned, and said, "How now, friend?--what is thy
business?"

"Death!" answered the pursuer.

"Thou shalt have it," replied the maiden.

The knight, as his enemy was on foot, dismounted, in order to render
the combat equal; and their swords are drawn in fury, and the fight
begins.[4]

Worthy of the brightest day-time was that fight--worthy of a theatre full
of valiant be-holders. Be not displeased, O. Night! that I draw it out of
thy bosom, and set it in the serene light of renown: the splendour will
but the more exhibit the great shade of thy darkness.

No trial was this of skill--no contest of warding and traversing and
taking heed--no artful interchange of blows now pretended, now given in
earnest, now glancing. Night-time and rage flung aside all consideration.
The swords horribly clashed and hammered on one another. Not a cut
descended in vain--not a thrust was without substance. Shame and fury
aggravated one another. Every blow became fiercer than the last. They
closed--they could use their blades no longer; they dashed the pummels of
their swords at one another's faces; they butted and shouldered with helm
and buckler. Three times the man threw his arms round the woman with
other embraces than those of love--three times they returned to their
swords, and cut and slashed one another's bleeding bodies; till at length
they were obliged to hold back for the purpose of taking breath.

Tancred and Clorinda stood fronting one another in the darkness, leaning
on their swords for want of strength. The last star in the heavens was
fading in the tinge of dawn; and Tancred saw that his enemy had lost more
blood than himself, and it made him proud and joyful. Oh, foolish mind of
us humans, elated at every fancy of success! Poor wretch! for what dost
thou rejoice? How sad will be thy victory! What a misery to look back
upon, thy delight! Every drop of that blood will be paid for with worlds
of tears!

Dimly thus looking at one another stood the combatants, bleeding a while
in peace. At length Tancred, who wished to know his antagonist, said, "It
hath been no good fortune of ours to be compelled thus to fight where
nobody can behold us; but we have at least become acquainted with the
good swords of one another. Let me request, therefore (if to request any
thing at such a time be not unbecoming), that I may be no stranger to thy
name. Permit me to learn, whatever be the result, who it is that shall
honour my death or my victory."

"I am not accustomed," answered the fierce maiden, "to disclose who I am;
nor shall I disclose it now. Suffice to hear, that thou seest before thee
one of the burners of the tower."

Tancred was exasperated at this discovery. "In an evil moment," cried he,
"hast thou said it. Thy silence and thy speech alike disgust me." Into
the combat again they dash, feeble as they were. Ferocious indeed is the
strife in which skill is not thought of, and strength itself is dead; in
which valour rages instead of contends, and feebleness becomes hate and
fury. Oh, the gates of blood that were set open in wounds upon wounds!
If life itself did not come pouring forth, it was only because scorn
withheld it.

As in the Жgean Sea, when the south and north winds have lost the
violence of their strength, the billows do not subside nevertheless, but
retain the noise and magnitude of their first motion; so the continued
impulse of the combatants carried them still against one another,
hurling them into mutual injury, though they had scarcely life in their
bodies.[5]

And now the fatal hour has come when Clorinda must die. The sword of
Tancred is in her bosom to the very hilt. The stomacher under the cuirass
which enclosed it is filled with a hot flood.

Her legs give way beneath her. She falls--she feels that she is
departing. The conqueror, with a still threatening countenance, prepares
to follow up his victory, and treads on her as she lies.

But a new spirit had come upon her--the spirit which called the beloved
of Heaven to itself; and, speaking in a sorrowing voice, she thus uttered
her last words:

"My friend, thou hast conquered--I forgive thee. Forgive thou me, not for
my body's sake, which fears nothing, but for the sake, alas, of my soul.
Baptise me, I beseech thee."

There was something in the voice, as the dying person spake these words,
that went, he knew not why, to the heart of Tancred. The tears forced
themselves into his eyes. Not far off there was a little stream, and the
conqueror went to it and filled his helmet; and returning, prepared for
the pious office by unlacing his adversary's helmet. His hands trembled
when he first beheld the forehead, though he did not yet know it; but
when the vizor was all down, and the face disclosed, he remained without
speech and motion.

Oh, the sight! oh, the recognition!

He did not die. He summoned up all the powers within him to support his
heart for that moment. He resolved to hold up his duty above his misery,
and give life with the sweet water to her whom he had slain with sword.
He dipped his fingers in it, and marked her forehead with the cross, and
repeated the words of the sacred office; and while he was repeating them,
the sufferer changed countenance for joy, and smiled, and seemed to say,
in the cheerfulness of her departure, "The heavens are opening--I go in
peace." A paleness and a shade together then came over her countenance,
as if lilies had been mixed with violets. She looked up at heaven, and
heaven itself might be thought for very tenderness to be looking at her;
and then she raised a little her hand towards that of the knight (for she
could not speak), and so gave it him in sign of goodwill; and with his
pressure of it her soul passed away, and she seemed asleep.

But Tancred no sooner beheld her dead, than all the strength of mind
which he had summoned up to support him fell flat on the instant. He
would have given way to the most frantic outcries; but life and speech
seemed to be shut up in one point in his heart; despair seized him like
death, and he fell senseless beside her. And surely he would have died
indeed, had not a party of his countrymen happened to come up. They were
looking for water, and had found it, and they discovered the bodies at
the same time. The leader knew Tancred by his arms. The beautiful body of
Clorinda, though he deemed her a Pagan, he would not leave exposed to
the wolves; so he directed them both to be carried to the pavilion of
Tancred, and there placed in separate chambers.

Dreadful was the waking of Tancred--not for the solemn whispering around
him--not for his aching wounds, terrible as they were,--but for the agony
of the recollection that rushed upon him. He would have gone staggering
out of the pavilion to seek the remains of his Clorinda, and save them
from the wolves; but his friends told him they were at hand, under the
curtain of his own tent. A gleam of pleasure shot across his face, and be
staggered into the chamber; but when he beheld the body gored with his
own hand, and the face, calm indeed, but calm like a pale night without
stars, he trembled so, that he would have sunk to the ground but for his
supporters.

"O sweet face!" he exclaimed; "thou mayst be calm now; but what is to
calm me? O hand that was held up to me in sign of peace and forgiveness!
to what have I brought thee? Wretch that I am, I do not even weep. Mine
eyes are as cruel as my hands. My blood shall be shed instead."

And with these words he began tearing off the bandages which the surgeons
had put upon him; and he thrust his fingers into his wounds, and would
have slain himself thus outright, had not the pain made him faint away.

He was then taken back to his own chamber. Godfrey came in the mean
time with the venerable hermit Peter; and when the sufferer awoke, they
addressed him in kind words, which even his impatience respected; but it
was not to be calmed till the preacher put on the terrors of religion,
remonstrating with him as an ingrate to God, and threatening him with the
doom of a sinner. The tears then crept into his eyes, and he tried to be
patient, and in some degree was so--only breaking out ever and anon, now
into exclamations of horror, and now into fond lamentations, talking as
if with the shade of his beloved.

Thus lay Tancred for days together, ever woful; till, falling asleep one
night towards the dawn, the shade of Clorinda did indeed appear to him,
more beautiful than ever, and clad in light and joy. She seemed to stoop
and wipe the tears from his eyes; and then said, "Behold how happy I am.
Behold me, O beloved friend, and see how happy, and bright, and beautiful
I am; and consider that it is all owing to thyself. 'Twas thou that
took'st me out of the false path, and made me worthy of admission among
saints and angels. There, in heaven, I love and rejoice; and there I look
to see thee in thine appointed time; after which we shall both love the
great God and one another for ever and ever. Be faithful, and command
thyself, and look to the end; for, lo, as far as it is permitted to a
blessed spirit to love mortality, even now I love thee!"

With these words the eyes of the vision grew bright beyond mortal beauty;
and then it turned and was hidden in the depth of its radiance, and
disappeared.

Tancred slept a quiet sleep; and when he awoke, he gave himself patiently
up to the will of the physician; and the remains of Clorinda were
gathered into a noble tomb.[6]


[Footnote 1: St. George.]

[Footnote 2: This fiction of a white Ethiop child is taken from the Greek
romance of Heliodorus, book the fourth. The imaginative principle on
which it is founded is true to physiology, and Tasso had a right to use
it; but the particular and excessive instance does not appear happy in
the eyes of a modern reader acquainted with the history of _albinos._]

[Footnote 3: The conceit is more antithetically put in the original

"Ch'egli avria del candor che in te si vede
Argomentato in lei non bianca fede."

Canto xii. st. 24.]

[Footnote 4: The poet here compares his hero and heroine to two jealous

"bulls," no happy comparison certainly.

"Vansi a ritrovar non altrimenti
Che duo tori gelosi." St. 53.]

[Footnote 5:

"Qual l'alto Egeo, perchи Aquilone o Noto
Cessi, che tutto prima il volse e scosse,
Non s'accheta perт, ma 'l suono e 'l moto
Ritien de l'onde anco agitate e grosse;
Tal, se ben manca in lor col sangue voto
Quel vigor che le braccia ai colpi mosse,
Serbano ancor l'impeto primo, e vanno
Da quel sospinti a giunger danno a danno."
Canto xii. st. 63.]

[Footnote 6: This tomb, Tancred says, in an address which he makes to it,

"has his flames inside of it, and his tears without:"
"Che dentro hai le mie fiamme, e fuori il pianto." St. 96.]

I am loath to