hat afflicts me. Oh! too happy were it
to me, too sweet and fortunate, if I could obtain grace enough to be
set with thee heart to heart, and so breathe out my soul into thy lips!
Perhaps thou wouldst do the like with mine, and so give me thy last
sigh."

Thus spoke the youth in tears; but the maiden gently reproved him.

She said: "Other thoughts, my friend, and other lamentations befit a time
like this. Why thinkest thou not of thy sins, and of the rewards which
God has promised to the righteous? Meet thy sufferings in his name; so
shall their bitterness be made sweet, and thy soul be carried into the
realms above. Cast thine eyes upwards, and behold them. See how beautiful
is the sky; how the sun seems to invite thee towards it with its
splendour."

At words so noble and piteous as these, the Pagans themselves, who stood
within hearing, began to weep. The Christians wept too, but in voices
more lowly. Even the king felt an emotion of pity; but disdaining to give
way to it, he turned aside and withdrew. The maiden alone partook not of
the common grief. She for whom every body wept, wept not for herself.

The flames were now beginning to approach the stake, when there appeared,
coming through the crowd, a warrior of noble mien, habited in the arms of
another country. The tiger, which formed the crest of his helmet, drew
all eyes to it, for it was a cognizance well known. The people began to
think that it was a heroine instead of a hero which they saw, even the
famous Clorinda. Nor did they err in the supposition.

A despiser of feminine habits had Clorinda been from her childhood. She
disdained to put her hand to the needle and the distaff. She renounced
every soft indulgence, every timid retirement, thinking that virtue could
be safe wherever it went in its own courageous heart; and so she armed
her countenance with pride, and pleased herself with making it stern, but
not to the effect she looked for, for the sternness itself pleased. While
yet a child her little right hand would control the bit of the charger,
and she wielded the sword and spear, and hardened her limbs with
wrestling, and made them supple for the race; and then as she grew up,
she tracked the footsteps of the bear and lion, and followed the trumpet
to the wars; and in those and in the depths of the forest she seemed a
wild creature to mankind, and a man to the wildest creature. She had now
come out of Persia to wreak her displeasure on the Christ