Oh him would prove himself, with sword and spear;
But would lay down this pact before the fight: --
That if the king unhorsed the cavalier,
Her who Arbantes slew, he, as his right,
Should have, that, at the cavalier's command,
Was ready for delivery to his hand;

LXIII
`And willed the king should on his side agree,
If him the knight in combat overbore,
Forthwith released from his captivity,
Bireno to full freedom to restore.'
To him the footman does his embassy;
But he, who knightly worth or courteous lore
Had never known, directs his whole intent
The count by treacherous fraud to circumvent.

LXIV
He hopes as well, if he the warrior slay,
To have the dame, whom, so aggrieved, he hates,
If in the knight's disposal, and the say
Of that strange knight, the footman well relates.
Hence thirty men dispatched by other way
Than to the portal led, where Roland waits;
Who with a long and privy circuit wind,
And come upon the paladin behind.

LXV
He all this while had made his guard delay
The knight with words, till horse and foot he spied
Arrived, where he this ambuscade did lay;
When from the gate he with as many hied:
As is the practised hunter's wonted way,
To circle wood and beasts on every side:
As nigh Volana, with his sweeping nets,
The wary fisher fish and pool besets.

LXVI
'Tis thus the king bars every path which lies
Free for the warrior's flight, with armed train:
He him alive, and in no other guise,
Would have, and lightly hopes his end to gain;
Nor for the earthly thunderbolt applies,
That had so many and so many slain:
Which here he deems would serve his purpose ill,
Where he desires to take and not to kill.

LXVII
As wary fowler, bent on greater prey,
Wisely preserves alive the game first caught,
That by the call-bird and his cheating play,
More may within the circling net be brought;
Such cunning art Cymosco would assay:
But Roland would not be so lightly bought;
Like them by the first toil that springs betrayed;
And quickly forced the circle which was made.

LXVIII
Where he perceives the assailants thickest stand,
He rests his lance, and sticks in his career
First one and afterwards another, and
Another, and another, who appear
Of paste; till six he of the circling band
Of foes impales upon a single spear;
A seventh left out, who by the push is slain,
Since the clogge