they speeded their guest on his noble purpose
of fighting in the lady's behalf. A guide from the abbey took him a short
cut through the forest towards the place where the matter was to be
decided; but, before they arrived, they heard cries of distress in a dark
quarter of the forest, and, turning their horses thither to see what it
was, they observed a damsel between two vagabonds, who were standing over
her with drawn swords. The moment the wretches saw the new comer, they
fled; and Rinaldo, after re-assuring the damsel, and requesting to know
what had brought her to a pass so dreadful, made his guide take her up
on his horse behind him, in order that they might lose no more time. The
damsel, who was very beautiful, could not speak at first, for the horror
of what she had expected to undergo; but, on Rinaldo's repeating his
request, she at length found words, and, in a voice of great humility,
began to relate her story.

But before she begins, the poet interferes with an impatient remark.--"Of
all the creatures in existence," cries he, "whether they be tame or wild,
whether they are in a state of peace or of war, man is the only one that
lays violent hands on the female of his species. The bear offers no
injury to his; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion; the heifer
has no fear of the horns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury
from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind?
Husband and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one
another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some times with
bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow himself to give a blow to a
woman, or to hurt even a hair of her head, is a violater of nature, and a
rebel against God; but to poison her, to strangle her, to take the soul
out of her body with a knife,--he that can do that, never will I believe
him to be a man at all, but a fiend out of hell with a man's face."[3]

Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo,
and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony
for ever.

But to return to what she was going to say.--

"You are to know, sir," she began, "that I have been from my childhood in
the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with
her; I was held in bonour, and I led a happy life, till it pleased the
cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that
there was no being o