rendala would not be shattered. And so he raised
Olifant to his lips and blew a dying blast that echoed down the cliffs
and up to the mountain tops and rang through the trees of the forest.
And still, to this day, do they say, when the spirit of the warrior
rides by night down the heights and through the dark pass of
Roncesvalles, even such a blast may be heard, waking all the echoes
and sounding through the lonely hollows of the hills.

Then he made confession, and with a prayer for pardon of his sins and
for mercy from the God whose faithful servant and soldier he had been
unto his life's end, the soul of Roland passed away.

"... With hands devoutly joined
He breathed his last. God sent his Cherubim,
Saint Raphael, Saint Michel del Peril.
Together with them Gabriel came.--All bring
The soul of Count Rolland to Paradise.
Aoi."

Charlemagne and his army found him lying thus, and very terrible were
the grief and the rage of the Emperor as he looked on him and on the
others of his Douzeperes and on the bodies of that army of twenty
thousand.

"All the field was with blod ouer roun"--"Many a good swerd was broken
ther"--"Many a fadirles child ther was at home."

By the side of Roland, Charlemagne vowed vengeance, but ere he avenged
his death he mourned over him with infinite anguish:

"'The Lord have mercy, Roland, on thy soul!
Never again shall our fair France behold
A knight so worthy, till France be no more!

* * * * *

How widowed lies our fair France, and how lone!
How will the realms that I have swayed rebel,
Now thou art taken from my weary age!
So deep my woe that fain would I die too
And join my valiant Peers in Paradise,
While men inter my weary limbs with thine!'"

A terrible vengeance was the one that he took next day, when the
Saracen army was utterly exterminated; and when all the noble dead had
been buried where they fell, save only Roland, Oliver, and Turpin, the
bodies of these three heroes were carried to Blaye and interred with
great honour in the great cathedral there.

Charlemagne then returned to Aix, and as he entered his palace, Aude
the Fair, sister of Oliver, and the betrothed of Roland, hastened to
meet him. Where were the Douzeperes? What was the moaning murmur as of
women who wept, that had heralded the arrival in the town of the
Emperor and his conquer