e
horrible perplexity; so the trembling lover, though suspecting what he
beheld, had so frightful an image before his thoughts of Clorinda weeping
and wailing after death, and bleeding in her very soul, that he had
not the heart to do more, or to remain in the place. He returned in
bewildered sorrow to Godfrey, and told him all. "It is not in my power,"
he said, "to touch another bough of that forest."[5]

The astonished leader of the Christians now made up his mind to go
himself; and so, with prayer and valour united, bring this appalling
adventure to some conclusion. But the hermit Peter dissuaded him. The
holy man, in an ecstacy of foreknowledge, beheld the coming of the only
champion fated to conclude it; and Godfrey himself the same night had a
vision from heaven, bidding him grant the petition of those who should
sue him next day for the recall of Rinaldo from exile--Rinaldo, the right
hand of the army, as Godfrey was its head.

The petition was made as soon as daylight appeared; and two knights,
Carlo and Ubaldo, were despatched in search of the fated hero.

Part the Fourth

THE LOVES OF RINALDO AND ARMIDA.

The knights, with information procured on the road from a good wizard,
struck off for the sea-coast, and embarking in a pinnace which
miraculously awaited them, sailed along the shores of the Mediterranean
for the retreat of Armida. They saw the Egyptian army assembled at Gaza,
but hoped to return with Rinaldo before it could effect anything at
Jerusalem. They passed the mouths of the Nile, and Alexandria, and
Cyrene, and Ptolemais, and the cities of the Moors, and the dangers of
the Greater and Lesser Whirlpools, and their pilot showed them the spot
where Carthage stood,--Carthage, now a dead city, whose grave is scarcely
discernible. For cities die; kingdoms die;--a little sand and grass
covers all that was once lofty in them and glorious. And yet man,
forsooth, disdains that he is mortal! Oh, mind of ours, inordinate and
proud![6]

After looking towards the site of Carthage, they passed Algiers, and
Oran, and Tingitana, and beheld the opposite coast of Spain, and
then they cleared the narrow sea of Gibraltar, and came out into the
immeasurable ocean, leaving all sight of land behind them; and so
speeding ever onward in the billows, they beheld at last a cluster of
mountainous and beautiful islands; the larger ones inhabited by a simple
people, the smaller quite wild and desolate. So at least they ap