With triumphal pomp and great festivity they return together into the city, which is green with branches and garlands. All the streets are hung with tapestries. A shower of herbs and flowers spreads from above and falls upon and around the victors, cast in handfuls from loggias and fair windows by ladies and damsels.
In various places where they turn a corner they find improvised arches and trophies displaying pictures of the ruins and fires of Biserta and other worthy deeds; elsewhere, balconies with divers games and spectacles and mimes and plays; and at every corner is inscribed the true title: To the Liberators of the Empire.
With sound of shrill trumpets and mellow clarinets, with harmony of every instrument, mid laughter and applause, joy and favor of the people, who could hardly come close enough, the great Emperor dismounted at the palace, where several days that company stayed to enjoy itself with tournaments, personnages and farces, dances and banquets (xliv. 32-34).
This is a preciously distinct picture of actual Renaissance pageantry. More vividly detailed is the funeral of Brandimarte. Even these, however, are not dilated. They are appropriate to their narrative function. The long descriptive summary of Astolfo’s journey through the Valley of the Moon is an interlude of satire; and Orlando’s battle with the monster Orc is pure grotesque. He rows into the Orc’s mouth, casts anchor there, and, when the monster plunges, tows him ashore. Moreover, both these are narrated; neither is a descriptive pause.
Ariosto does pause, however, to dilate description of the beauty of women. Seven stanzas enumerate the charms of the enchantress Alcina (vii. 10-16).
The fair palace excelled not so much in surpassing the richness of every other as in having the most delightful folk in the world and the noblest. Little did one differ from another in flowered age and in beauty; only Alcina was most beautiful of all, as the sun is more beautiful than any star.
In person she was as well formed as the industry of painters can imagine: her blond hair long and tressed; gold is not more splendid and lustrous. Rose mingled with hawthorn white spread over her delicate cheek. Of polished ivory was her joyous forehead, and of just proportion.
Beneath two black and fine-spun brows are two black eyes, as two clear suns, sympathetic in gaze, frugal in movement, about which Love seems to sport and fly, and from which he empties his quiver and visibly steals hearts. Thence descends a nose in which Envy herself could find no fault.
Beneath this, as between two valleys, the mouth besprent with native cinnabar, wherein are two rows of choice pearls, enclosed or opened by fair, sweet lips, whence issues speech of courtesy fit to soften even a base heart, and whence rises the winsome laughter that brings paradise to its place on earth [and so on for three more stanzas].