Last of all, ten horse-lengths from this vanguard, appeared the envoys of Marsillus, King of Portugal, Castile, Arragon, Leon, and Valence. All who beheld them trembled, and ridicule gave place to alarm.
[Original Size] -- [Medium-Size]
He was twelve cubits in height, and his face measured three feet across, his nose being nine inches long. His arms and legs were six feet long; his fingers were six inches and two lines. His inordinately large mouth was armed with sharp-pointed yellow tusks, and seemed less like human jaws than the portcullis of some rude stronghold. He was descended from Goliath, and assumed the title of Governor of Jerusalem. He had the strength of thirty men, and his mace was made of the trunk of an oak three hundred years old.*
This monster was attired in the hides of strange wild beasts, slain by himself on the peaks of Atlas, whither no other mortal had been able to penetrate.
His horse was without a match in the world, for it was up to his enormous weight. It gave a loud neigh on entering the list, and so alarmed all the other steeds that they reared, and in some instances unseated their riders—a disaster at which the Saracens burst into roars of laughter.
Himiltrude, in her terror, crossed herself, convinced that the new-comers would vanish in smoke before she could say “Amen!” But the Pagans continued to advance in good order.