here.
He thanks and lauds his God, who him that night
Blest with so high a fortune and so rare;
Hoping to win the horse without a peer,
Baiardo, from the Christian cavalier.

XCI
Gradasso had desired long time before
(I think you will have read the tale elsewhere)
To back that courser, which Rinaldo bore,
And Durindana by his side to wear:
He with a hundred thousand men and more
To France, with this design, had made repair;
And had erewhile to bloody fight defied,
Even for that good steed, Mount Alban's pride.

XCII
Hence had that king repaired to the sea-shore,
The place assigned to end their discord fell:
But all was marred by Malagigi's lore;
Who, cheating good Rinaldo with a spell,
To sea the champion in a pinnace bore.
Too tedious were the tale at length to tell.
Hence evermore Gradasso had opined,
The gentle baron was of craven kind.

XCIII
Now that Gradasso learns Mount Alban's peer
Is he, that storms the camp, in huge delight,
Armed, on Alfana leaps the cavalier,
And through the pitchy darkness seeks the knight,
O'erturning all who cross his fierce career,
He leaves afflicted and in piteous plight
The broken bands of Afric and of France.
All, food alike for his wide-wasting lance.

XCIV
He seeks the paladin, now here now there,
Echoing his name as loud as he can shout;
And thitherward inclines his courser, where
The bodies are most thickly strown about.
At length encounter, sword to sword, the pair,
For broken are alike their lances stout;
Which shivering in their hands, had flown upright.
And smote the starry chariot of the Night.

XCV
When King Gradasso recognized the foe,
Not by the blazoned bearing of his shield,
But by Baiardo -- by that horrid blow,
Which made him seem sole champion of the field,
He to reproach the knight was nothing slow,
And of unworthy action him appealed;
In that he had not kept his ground and day,
Erewhile appointed for the fierce assay.

XCVI
"Belike thou hoped," (said he of Sericane,)
"If for that time my vengeance thou couldst fly,
We should not meet in this wide world again:
But we are met, thou seest, anew; and I,
Be sure, though thou shouldst seek the Stygian reign,
Or be from earth translated to the sky,
Will hunt thee, save that courser thou forego,
Be it through heaven above or hell below.

XCVII
"Dost thou, as matched with me m