THE
DEATH OF AGRICAN.
The siege of Albracca was going on formidably under the command of Agrican, and the city of Galafron was threatened with the loss of the monarch's daughter, Angelica, when Orlando, at his earnest prayer, came to assist him, and changing at once the whole course of the war, threw the enemy in his turn into transports of anxiety. Wherever the great Paladin came, pennon and standard fell before him. Men were cut up and cloven down, at every stroke of his sword; and whereas the Indians had been in full rout but a moment before, and the Tartars ever on their flanks, Galafron himself being the swiftest among the spurrers away, it was now the Tartars that fled for their lives; for Orlando was there, and a band of fresh knights were about him, and Agrican in vain attempted to rally his troops. The Paladin kept him constantly in his front, forcing him to attend to nobody else. The Tartar king, who cared not a button for Galafron and all his army,[1] provided he could but rid himself of this terrible knight (whom he guessed at, but did not know), bethought him of a stratagem. He turned his horse, and made a show of flying in despair. Orlando dashed after him, as he desired; and Agrican fled till he reached a green place in a wood, with a fountain in it.
The place was beautiful, and the Tartar dismounted to refresh himself at the fountain, but without taking off his helmet, or laying aside any of his armour. Orlando was quickly at his back, crying out, "So bold, and yet such a fugitive! How could you fly from a single arm, and yet think to escape? When a man can die with honour, he should be glad to die; for he may live and fare worse. He may get death and infamy together."
The Tartar king had leaped on his saddle the moment he saw his enemy; and when the Paladin had done speaking, he said in a mild voice, "Without doubt you are the best knight I ever encountered; and fain would I leave you untouched for your own sake, if you would cease to hinder me from rallying my people. I pretended to fly, in order to bring you out of the field. If you insist upon fighting, I must needs fight and slay you; but I call the sun in the heavens to witness, that I would rather not. I should be very sorry for your death."
The County Orlando felt pity for so much gallantry; and he said," The nobler you shew yourself, the more it grieves me to think, that in dying without a knowledge of the true faith, you will be lost in the other world. Let me advise you to save body and soul at once. Receive baptism, and go your way in peace."
Agrican looked him in the face, and replied, "I suspect you to be the Paladin Orlando. If you are, I would not lose this opportunity of fighting with you, to be king of Paradise. Talk to me no more about your things of the other world; for you will preach in vain. Each of us for himself, and let the sword be umpire."
No sooner said than done. The Tartar drew his sword, boldly advancing upon Orlando; and a cut and thrust fight began, so long and so terrible, each warrior being a miracle of prowess, that the story says it lasted from noon till night. Orlando then, seeing the stars come out, was the first to propose a respite. "What are we to do," said he, "now that daylight has left us?"
Agrican answered readily enough, "Let us repose in this meadow, and renew the combat at dawn."
The repose was taken accordingly. Each tied up his horse, and reclined himself on the grass, not far from one another, just as if they had been friends,—Orlando by the fountain, Agrican beneath a pine. It was a beautiful clear night; and as they talked together, before addressing themselves to sleep, the champion of Christendom, looking up at the firmament, said, "That is a fine piece of workmanship, that starry spectacle. God made it all,—that moon of silver, and those stars of gold, and the light of day and the sun,—all for the sake of human kind."
"You wish, I see, to talk of matters of faith," said the Tartar. "Now I may as well tell you at once, that I have no sort of skill in such matters, nor learning of any kind. I never could learn anything when I was a boy. I hated it so, that I broke the man's head who was commissioned to teach me; and it produced such an effect on others, that nobody ever afterwards dared so much as shew me a book. My boyhood was therefore passed as it should be, in horsemanship, and hunting, and learning to fight. What is the good of a gentleman's poring all day over a book? Prowess to the knight, and prattle to the clergyman. That is my motto."
"I acknowledge," returned Orlando, "that arms are the first consideration of a gentleman; but not at all that he does himself dishonour by knowledge. On the contrary, knowledge is as great an embellishment of the rest of his attainments, as the flowers are to the meadow before us; and as to the knowledge of his Maker, the man that is without it is no better than a stock or a stone, or a brute beast. Neither, without study, can he reach anything like a due sense of the depth and divineness of the contemplation."
"Learned or not learned," said Agrican, "you might skew yourself better bred than by endeavouring to make me talk on a subject on which you have me at a disadvantage. I have frankly told you what sort of person I am; and I dare say, that you for your part are very learned and wise. You will therefore permit me, if you say anything more of such things, to make you no answer. 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, or are you not, may I ask, that Orlando who makes such a noise in the world? And what is it, pray, 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 with no heart in his breast."
The County replied, "Orlando I am, and in love I am.[2] Love has made me abandon every thing, 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 colour 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 the 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 fight myself. I cannot bear that any one else should love her, and I live to see it. Why, therefore, should either of us perish? Give her up. Not a soul shall know it."[3]
"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 soon live without breath itself, as cease loving Angelica."
Agrican bad scarcely patience enough to let the speaker finish, ere he leaped 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 wouldn't if I could. You must seek her by other means than these."
Fiercely dashed their horses together, in the night-time, on the green mead. Despiteful and terrible were the blows they gave and took by the moonlight. There was no need of their looking out for one another, night-time though it was. Their business was to take as sharp heed of every movement, as if it had been noon-day.[4]
Agrican fought in a rage: Orlando was cooler. And now the struggle had lasted more than five hours, and dawn began to be visible, 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 a cheesecake; 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.
His body only, however; not a particle of his soul. So dreadful was the blow which the Paladin gave in return, that not only shield, but every bit of mail on the body of Agrican, was broken in pieces, and three of his left ribs cut asunder.
The Tartar, roaring like a lion, raised his sword with still greater vehemence than before, and dealt a blow on the Paladin's helmet, such as he had never yet received from mortal man. For a moment it took away his senses. His sight failed; his ears tinkled; his frightened horse turned about to fly; and he was falling from the saddle, when the very action of falling jerked his head upwards, and with the jerk he regained his recollection.
"O my God!" thought he, "what a shame is this! how shall I ever again dare to face Angelica! I have been fighting, hour after hour, with this man, and he is but one, and I call myself Orlando. If the combat last any longer, I will bury myself in a monastery, and never look on sword again."
Orlando muttered with his lips closed and his teeth ground together; and you might have thought that fire instead of breath came out of his nose and mouth. He raised his sword Durindana with both his hands, and sent it down so tremendously on Agrican's left shoulder, that it cut through breast-plate and belly-piece down to the very haunch; nay, crushed the saddle-bow, though it was made of bone and iron, and felled man and horse to the earth. From shoulder to hip was Agrican cut through his weary soul, and he turned as white as ashes, and felt death upon him. He called Orlando to come close to him with a gentle voice, and said, as well as he could, "I believe in Him who died on the Cross. Baptise me, I pray thee, with the fountain, before my senses are gone. I have lived an evil life, but need not be rebellious to God in death also. May He who came to save all the rest of the world, save me! He is a God of great mercy."
And he shed tears, did that king, though he had been so lofty and fierce.
Orlando dismounted quickly, with his own face in tears. He gathered the king tenderly in his arms, and took and laid him by the fountain, on a marble cirque which it had; and then he wept in concert with him heartily, and asked his pardon, and so baptised him in the water of the fountain, and knelt and prayed to God for him with joined hands.
He then paused and looked at him; and when he perceived his countenance changed, and that his whole person was cold, he left him there on the marble cirque by the fountain, all armed as he was, with the sword by his side, and the crown upon his head.
* * * * *
I think I may anticipate the warm admiration of the reader for the whole of this beautiful episode, particularly its close. "I think," says Panizzi, "that Tasso had this passage particularly in view when he wrote the duel of Clorinda and Tancredi, and her conversion and baptism before dying. The whole passage, from stanza xii. (where Agrican receives his mortal blow) to this, is beautiful; and the delicate proceeding of Orlando in leaving Agrican's body armed, even with the sword in his hand, is in the noblest spirit of chivalry."—Edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. iii. page 357.
The reader will find the original in the Appendix No. I.
In the course of the poem (canto xix. stanza xxvi.) a knight, with the same noble delicacy, who is in distress for a set of arms, borrows those belonging to the dead body, with many excuses, and a kiss on its face.
[Footnote 1:
"Che tutti insieme, e 'l suo Rè Galafrone,
Non li stimava quanto un vil bottone.">[
[Footnote 2: Berni has here introduced the touching words, "Would I were not so!" (Così non foss'io!)]
[Footnote 3: This proposal is in the highest ingenuous spirit of the absurd wilfulness of passion, thinking that every thing is to give way before it, not excepting the same identical wishes in other people.]
[Footnote 4: Very fine all this, I think.]