er, this reckless man vaults upon a hippogriff which lands him
on an island, where an enchantress changes her visitors into beasts,
stones, trees, etc. Instead of becoming one of her permanent victims,
Rogero, warned by the myrtle to which he ties his steed, prevails upon
her to release her captives, and after many adventures is borne by the
same hippogriff to the island of Ebuda, where a maiden is daily
sacrificed to a cannibal Orc. When Rogero discovers that the present
victim is Angelica, he promptly delivers her and conveys her to
Brittany.

Meantime Orlando, mad with love, is vainly seeking Angelica. He too
visits Ebuda--but too late to meet her there--and delivers another
maiden. Then he returns to France to find Charlemagne so sorely
pressed by foes, that he has implored St. Michael to interfere in his
behalf. This archangel, cleverly enlisting the services of Silence and
Discord, brings back Rinaldo and other knights, who drive away the
disintegrating pagan force after sundry bloody encounters. After one
of these, Angelica finds a wounded man, whom she nurses back to
health, and marries after a romantic courtship in the course of which
they carve their names on many a tree.

Still seeking Angelica, Orlando in due time discovers these names, and
on learning Angelica is married becomes violently insane. Discarding
his armor,--which another knight piously collects and hangs on a tree
with an inscription warning no one to venture to touch it,--Orlando
roams hither and thither, performing countless feats of valor, and
even swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar to seek adventures in
Africa since he cannot get enough in Europe. In the course of his
wanderings, Orlando (as well as sundry other characters in the poem)
is favored by an apparition of Fata Morgana, the water-fairy, who
vainly tries to lure him away from his allegiance to his lady-love by
offering him untold treasures.

Every once in a while the poem harks back to Rogero, who, having again
fallen into a magician's hands, prowls through the labyrinthine rooms
of his castle, seeking Bradamant, whom he imagines calling to him for
help. Meantime the lady whom he is thus seeking is safe at Marseilles,
but, hearing at last of her lover's plight, she too visits the magic
castle, and would have been decoyed into its dungeons had not Astolfo
appeared with a magic horn, whose first blast makes the castle vanish
into thin air! Thus freed, the magician's prisoners