Armida was in the act of putting a shaft to her bosom, in order to die upon it, when her arm was arrested by a mighty grasp; and turning round, she beheld with a shriek the beloved face of him who had caused the ruin of her and hers. She closed her disdainful eyes and fainted away. Rinaldo supported her; he loosened her girdle; he bathed her bosom and her eyelids with his tears. Coming at length to herself, still she would not look at him. She would fain not have been supported by him. She endeavoured with her weak fingers to undo the strong ones that clasped her; she wept bitterly, and at length spoke, but still without meeting his eyes.
"And may I not," she said, "even die? must I be followed and tormented even in my last moments? What mockery of a wish to save me is this! I will not be watched; I believe not a syllable of such pity; and I will not be made a sight of, and a by-word. I ask my life of thee no longer; I want nothing but death; and death itself I would not receive at such hands; they would render even that felicity hateful. Leave me. I could not be hindered long from putting an end to my miseries, whatever barbarous restraint might be put upon me. There are a thousand ways of dying; and I will be neither hindered, nor deceived, nor flattered—oh, never more!"
Weeping she spoke—weeping always, and sobbing, and full of wilful words.
But yet she felt all the time the arm that was round her.
"Armida," said Rinaldo, in a voice full of tenderness, "be calm, and know me for what I am—no enemy, no conqueror, nothing that intends thee shame or dishonour; but thy champion, thy restorer—he that will preserve thy kingdom for thee, and seat thee in house and home. Look at me—look in these eyes, and see if they speak false. And oh, would to Heaven thou wouldst indeed be as I am in faith. There isn't a queen in all the East should equal thee in glory."
His tears fell on her eyelids as he spoke—scalding tears; and she looked at him, and her heart re-opened to its lord, all love and worship; and Armida said, "Behold thy handmaid; dispose of her even as thou wilt."
And that same day Godfrey of Boulogne was lord of Jerusalem, and paid his vows on the sepulchre of his Master.
[Footnote 1:
"Chiama gli abitator' de l'ombre eterne
Il rauco suon de la tartarea tromba.
Treman le spaziose atre caverne,
E l'aer cieco a quel romor rimbomba.
Nè sì stridendo mai da le superne
Regioni del cielo il folgor piomba:
Nè sì scossa già mai trema la terra,
Quando i vapori in sen gravida serra."
Canto iv. st. 3.
The trump of Tartarus, with iron roar,
Called to the dwellers the black regions under:
Hell through its caverns trembled to the core,
And the blind air rebellowed to the thunder:
Never yet fiery bolt more fiercely tore
The crashing firmament, like rocks, asunder;
Nor with so huge a shudder earth's foundations
Shook to their mighty heart, lifting the nations.
The tone of this stanza (suggested otherwise by Vida) was caught from a fine one in Politian, the passage in which about the Nile I ought to have called to mind at page 168.