assisted by
her art, would be in dread of no visitors, no discovery. She bore him to
the top of a mountain, and cast a spell about the mountain, to make the
top lovely and the sides inaccessible. She put shapes of wild beasts
and monsters in the woods of the lowest region, and heaps of ice in the
second, and alluring and betraying shapes and enchantments towards the
summit; and round the summit she put walls and labyrinths of inextricable
error; and in the heart of these was a palace by a lake, and the
loveliest of gardens.

Mere Rinaldo was awaked by love and beauty; and here for the present he
is left.

Part the Third.

THE TERRORS OF THE ENCHANTED FOREST.

Meantime the siege of the Holy City had gone on, with various success on
either side, but chiefly to the loss of the Christians. The machinations
of Satan were prevailing. Rinaldo, in his absence, was thought to have
been slain by the contrivance of Godfrey, which nearly produced a revolt
of the forces. Godfrey was himself wounded in battle by Clorinda: and now
the great wooden tower was burnt, and Clorinda slain in consequence (as
you have heard in another place), which oppressed the courage of Tancred
with melancholy.

On the other hand, the Powers of Evil were far from being as prosperous
as they wished. They had lost the soul of Clorinda. They had seen Godfrey
healed by a secret messenger from Heaven, who dropt celestial balsam
into his wound. They had seen the return of Armida's prisoners, who had
arrived just in time to change the fortune of a battle, and drive the
Pagans back within their walls. And worse than all, they had again felt
the arm of St. Michael, who had threatened them with worse consequences
if they reappeared in the contest.

The fiends, however, had colleagues on earth, who plotted for them
meanwhile. The Christians had set about making another tower; but in
this proceeding they were thwarted by the enchanter Ismeno, who cast his
spells to better purpose this time than he had done in the affair of the
stolen image. The forest in which the Christians obtained wood for these
engines lay in a solitary valley, not far from the camp. It was very old,
dark, and intricate; and had already an evil fame as the haunt of impure
spirits. No shepherd ever took his flock there; no Pagan would cut a
bough from it; no traveller approached it, unless he had lost his way:
he made a large circuit to avoid it, and pointed it out anxiously to his
compani