Armida came sweetly towards him, with a countenance at once grieving and
rejoicing, but expressing above all infinite affection. "And do I indeed
see thee again?" she said; "and wilt thou not fly me a second time? am
I visited to be consoled, or to be treated again as an enemy? is poor
Armida so formidable, that thou must needs close up thine helmet when
thou beholdest her? Thou mightest surely have vouchsafed her once more a
sight of thine eyes. Let us be friends, at least, if we may be nothing
more. Wilt thou not take her hand?"

Rinaldo's answer was, to turn away as from a cheat, to look towards the
myrtle-tree, to draw his sword, and proceed with manifest intentions of
assailing it. She ran before him shrieking, and hugged it round. "Nay,
thou wilt not," she said, "thou wilt not hurt my tree--not cut and slay
what is bound up with the life of Armida? Thy sword must pass first
through her bosom."

Armida writhed and wailed; Rinaldo nevertheless raised his sword, and it
was coming against the tree, when her shape, like a thing in a dream,
was metamorphosed as quick as lightning. It became a giant, a Briareus,
wielding a hundred swords, and speaking in a voice of thunder. Every
one of the nymphs at the same instant became a Cyclops; tempest and
earthquake ensued, and the air was full of ghastly spectres.

Rinaldo again raised his arm with a more vehement will; he struck, and
at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the
forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of
old--a natural gloomy wood, but no prodigy.

Rinaldo returned to the camp, his aspect that of a conqueror; the silver
wings of his crest, the white eagle, glittering in the sun. The hermit
Peter came forward to greet him; a shout was sent up by the whole camp;
Godfrey gave him high reception; nobody envied him. Workmen, no longer
trembling, were sent to the forest to cut wood for the machines of war;
and the tower was rebuilt, together with battering-rams and balistas, and
catapults, most of them an addition to what they had before. The tower
also was now clothed with bulls-hides, as a security against being set on
fire; and a bridge was added to the tower, from which the besiegers could
at once step on the city-walls.

With these long-desired invigorations of his strength, the commander of
the army lost no time in making a general assault on Jerusalem; for
a dove, supernaturally pursued by a falcon,