Mine own to wear and cherish, as the leaves
Embrace thee and enfold,
Be not so white, so cold:
Bloom also for the lonely heart that grieves![9]
Gandalin journeyed to Miraflores to acquaint Oriana with the news that Corisanda had arrived at Court and had been reunited to Florestan. Delighted as she was at this intelligence, she could not help comparing the happy condition of the lovers with her own, and burst into tears. But even as she wept the Damsel of Denmark was announced. Oriana listened to her tidings with a beating heart, and when the Damsel gave her a letter from Amadis, in which she found his ring enclosed, she all but swooned with excess of joy.
Amadis lay in a distant nunnery, recovering from the wasting sorrow from which he had suffered so long. When he felt stronger, he donned green armour, so that he might not be known, and travelled toward London. On the eighth day of his journey he encountered the giant knight Quadragante, he who among others had defied King Lisuarte. Amadis unhorsed the gigantic warrior, who yielded himself vanquished and promised to deliver himself up to Lisuarte.
Amadis Slays Famongomadan
Proceeding on his way, Amadis passed some tents pitched in a meadow which were occupied by a party of knights and damsels in the service of the Princess Leonora. The knights insisted upon his breaking a lance with them. He unhorsed them all and rode on. While he was in the act of drinking from a well not many miles farther on, he espied a wagon full of captive knights and damsels in chains. Before it, on a huge black horse, rode a giant so immense that he was terrible to behold, and Amadis knew him for Famongomadan, who had sent his challenge to Lisuarte. Amadis, who was much wearied by his recent encounter with the knights, did not then desire to meet him, but when he saw that Leonora was in the wagon along with the other damsels he leapt on his destrier and, looking toward Miraflores, where Oriana was, awaited the giant’s onset.
Seeing him, Famongomadan thundered down upon him like a human avalanche. His great boar-spear transfixed Amadis’s horse, but the lance of the paladin ran its way clean through the monster’s carcass and broke off short in his body. At this his son Basagante ran to the rescue, but Amadis, disengaging himself from his fallen steed, drew his sword and severed one of Basagante’s legs from the trunk. But his falchion snapped in twain with the violence of the blow, and a fierce struggle for Basagante’s axe ended in Amadis wrenching it from his opponent’s grasp and smiting off his head. Then he slew Famongomadan with his own spear, and, releasing the knights in the wagon, requested them to carry the bodies of the dead giants to King Lisuarte and say that they were sent by a strange knight, Beltenebros. And mounting the great black horse of Famongomadan, he galloped off.