Sophronia had looked up when she heard the youth call out, and she gazed on him with eyes of pity. "What madness is this!" exclaimed she. "What can induce an innocent person to bring destruction on himself for nothing? Can I not bear the thing by myself? Is the anger of one man so tremendous, that one person cannot sustain it? Trust me, friend, you are mistaken. I stand in no need of your company."
Thus spoke Sophronia to her lover; but not a whit was he disposed to alter his mind. Oh, great and beautiful spectacle! Love and virtue at strife;—death the prize they contend for;—ruin itself the salvation of the conqueror! But the contest irritated the king. He felt himself set at nought; felt death itself despised, as if in despite of the inflictor. "Let them be taken at their words," cried be; "let both have the prize they long for."
The youth is seized on the instant, and bound like the maiden. Both are tied to the stake, and set back to back. They behold not the face of one another. The wood is heaped round about them; the fire is kindled.
The youth broke out into lamentations, but only loud enough to be heard by his fellow-sufferer. "Is this, then," said he, "the bond which I hoped might join us? Is this the fire which I thought might possibly warm two lovers' hearts?[3] Too long (is it not so?) have we been divided, and now too cruelly are we united: too cruelly, I say, but not as regards me; for since I am not to be partner of thy existence, gladly do I share thy death. It is thy fate, not mine, that afflicts me. Oh! too happy were it to me, too sweet and fortunate, if I could obtain grace enough to be set with thee heart to heart, and so breathe out my soul into thy lips! Perhaps thou wouldst do the like with mine, and so give me thy last sigh."
Thus spoke the youth in tears; but the maiden gently reproved him.
She said: "Other thoughts, my friend, and other lamentations befit a time like this. Why thinkest thou not of thy sins, and of the rewards which God has promised to the righteous? Meet thy sufferings in his name; so shall their bitterness be made sweet, and thy soul be carried into the realms above. Cast thine eyes upwards, and behold them. See how beautiful is the sky; how the sun seems to invite thee towards it with its splendour."
At words so noble and piteous as these, the Pagans themselves, who stood within hearing, began to weep. The Christians wept too, but in voices more lowly. Even the king felt an emotion of pity; but disdaining to give way to it, he turned aside and withdrew. The maiden alone partook not of the common grief. She for whom every body wept, wept not for herself.
The flames were now beginning to approach the stake, when there appeared, coming through the crowd, a warrior of noble mien, habited in the arms of another country. The tiger, which formed the crest of his helmet, drew all eyes to it, for it was a cognizance well known. The people began to think that it was a heroine instead of a hero which they saw, even the famous Clorinda. Nor did they err in the supposition.
A despiser of feminine habits had Clorinda been from her childhood. She disdained to put her hand to the needle and the distaff. She renounced every soft indulgence, every timid retirement, thinking that virtue could be safe wherever it went in its own courageous heart; and so she armed her countenance with pride, and pleased herself with making it stern, but not to the effect she looked for, for the sternness itself pleased. While yet a child her little right hand would control the bit of the charger, and she wielded the sword and spear, and hardened her limbs with wrestling, and made them supple for the race; and then as she grew up, she tracked the footsteps of the bear and lion, and followed the trumpet to the wars; and in those and in the depths of the forest she seemed a wild creature to mankind, and a man to the wildest creature. She had now come out of Persia to wreak her displeasure on the Christians, who had already felt the sharpness of her sword; and as she arrived near this assembled multitude, death was the first thing that met her eyes, but in a shape so perplexing, that she looked narrowly to discern what it was, and then spurred her horse towards the scene of action. The crowd gave way as she approached, and she halted as she entered the circle round the stake, and sat gazing on the youth and maiden. She wondered to see the male victim lamenting, while the female was mute. But indeed she saw that he was weeping not out of grief but pity; or at least, not out of grief for himself; and as to the maiden, she observed her to be so wrapt up in the contemplation of the heavens at which she was gazing, that she appeared to have already taken leave of earth.
Pity touched the heart of the Amazon, and the tears came into her eyes. She felt sorry for both the victims, but chiefly for the one that said nothing. She turned to a white-headed man beside her, and said, "What is this? Who are these two persons, whom crime, or their ill fortune, has brought hither?"