the crusaders. He surrendered himself to Godfrey (bk.
xx.).--Tasso, _Jerusalem Delivered_ (1575).

ALTASCAR (_Senor_). A courtly old Spaniard in Bret Harte's Notes by
_Flood and Field_. He is dispossessed of his corral in the Sacramento
Valley by a party of government surveyors, who have come to correct
boundaries (1878).

ALTEMERA. Typical far-southern girl, with a lovely face, creamy skin,
and a "lazy sweet voice," who takes the leading part in Annie Eliot's
_An Hour's Promise_ (1888).

ALTHAEA'S BRAND. The Fates told Althaea that her son Melea'ger
would live just as long as a log of wood then on the fire remained
unconsumed. Althaea contrived to keep the log unconsumed for many
years, but when her son killed her two brothers, she threw it angrily
into the fire, where it was quickly consumed, and Meleager expired at
the same time.--Ovid, _Metaph_. viii. 4.

The fatal brand Althaea burned.
Shakespeare, 2 _Henry VI_. act i. sc. 1 (1591).

ALTHE'A (_The divine_), of Richard Lovelace, was Lucy Saeheverell,
also called by the poet, _Lucasta_.

When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates.

(The "grates" here referred to were those of a prison in which
Lovelace was confined by the Long Parliament, for his petition from
Kent in favor of the king.)

ALTHEETAR, one of the seven bridegrooms of Lopluel, condemned to die
successively, by a malignant spirit. He is young, beautiful, and
endowed with rare gifts of soul and mind. While singing to her, his
lyre falls from his hand and he dies in her arms, her loosened hair
falling about him as a shroud.

"So calm, so fair,
He rested on the purple, tapestried floor,
It seemed an angel lay reposing there."

_Lopluel, or the Bride of Seven_, by Maria del Occidente (Maria Gowen
Brooks) (1833).

ALTISIDO'RA, one of the duchess's servants, who pretends to be in love
with don Quixote, and serenades him. The don sings his response that
he has no other love than what he gives to his Dulcin'ea, and while he
is still singing he is assailed by a string of cats, let into the room
by a rope. As the knight is leaving the mansion, Altisidora accuses
him of having stolen her garters, but when the knight denies the
charge, the damsel protests that she said so in her distraction, for
her garters were not stolen. "I am like the man looking for his mule
at the time he was astride its back."--Cervantes, _Don