As in the Ægean 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.