Whilst these events were passing, Lisuarte, the father of our hero, had returned to Trebizond, and had formally requested the hand of Onoloria. But Zairo, Soldan of Babylon, had seen this princess in a dream, and, accompanied by his sister Abra, had arrived at Trebizond to demand her in marriage. The Emperor was quite prepared to grant his suit, but not so Lisuarte, who had prior claims to the lady, and his opposition so enraged the Soldan that he resorted to warlike measures and set siege to “many-towered Trebizond.” After the siege had progressed for some time champions were selected from either army to decide the pretensions of the rival parties. But the Soldan’s paladins were defeated by Gradaffile, daughter of the King of the Giant’s Isle, who disguised herself as a knight, and whose Amazonian fury the unfortunate Babylonians could scarcely be expected to confront with any chance of success. The Soldan, however, after the manner of the baffled in romance, broke the rules of the tourney and carried off Onoloria by a stratagem.
As his fleet sailed with all speed from Trebizond, it encountered that of Amadis of Gaul, who was hastening to the relief of that city, and had evidently not been retarded in his passage of the Dardanelles by any considerations of international law. In the circumstances it is scarcely necessary to chronicle the Soldan’s overthrow, or dwell upon his untimely fate.
But the will to evil of the race of Babylon was not extinguished by the decease of the short-lived if romantically named Zairo. By his death his sister Abra succeeded to the throne of Semiramis. While sojourning at Trebizond in the happy days before hostilities had broken out between her brother and Lisuarte, she had fallen under the spell of that champion’s attractions, and after the manner of Eastern womanhood as depicted by the writers of romance, made the first advances to the object of her affections. Let us hope that he did not repulse her as rudely as did blunt Sir Bevis of Hamton, when the fair Saracen Josiana sent her envoys to him to acquaint him with her passion:
He said, if ye ne were messengers,
I should ye slay, ye lossengers.
I ne will rise one foot fro’ grounde
For to speak with an heathen hounde.
She is a hound, also be ye:
Out of my chamber swith ye flee.
But repulse her Lisuarte did, and all the fury of a woman scorned burned in the breast of the fair Babylonian. Out of the depths of her vengeance she sent emissaries to all the kingdoms of the earth, asking that the knighthood of every realm should assist her to destroy Lisuarte. One of her damsels while on this quest met with Amadis of Greece, who, still a pagan, was easily inveigled into promising that he would never rest until he had presented the lady Abra with the head of Lisuarte. On the arrival of Amadis at Trebizond a dreadful combat between father and son ensued, which was mercifully broken off by the timely appearance of Urganda, who, following her usual custom, made parent and child known to one another.