Than mine.' And thus the dame persists to moan
More Norandino's danger than her own.

LII
" `A hope conducts me here,' the monarch said,
`To save thee and thy followers every one;
And, if I cannot, I were better dead,
Than living without light of thee, my sun!
I trust to scape, as hither I have spied;
As ye shall all, if, as ourselves have done,
To compass our design, you do not shrink
To imbue your bodies with the loathsome stink.'

LIII
"The trick he told, wherewith the monster's smell
To cheat, as first to him the wife had told:
In any case to cloathe us in the fell,
That he may feel is issueing from the fold.
As many men as women in the cell,
We slay (persuaded by the monarch bold)
As many goats as with our number square,
Of those which stink the most and oldest are.

LIV
"We smeared our bodies with the fruitful grease
Which round about the fat intestines lay,
And cloathed our bodies with the shaggy fleece:
This while from golden dwelling broke the day.
And now, his flock returning to release,
We viewed the shepherd, with the dawning ray;
Who, giving breath to the sonorous reeds,
Piped forth his prisoned flock to hill and meads.

LV
"He held his hand before the opened lair,
Lest with the herd we issued from the den,
And stopt us short; but feeling wool or hair
Upon our bodies, let us go again.
By such a strange device we rescued were,
Cloathed in our shaggy fleeces, dames and men:
Nor any issuing thence the monster kept,
Till thither, sore alarmed, Lucina crept.

LVI
"Lucina -- whether she abhorred the scent,
And, like us others, loathed herself to smear,
-- Or whether with a slower gait she went
Than might like the pretended beast's appear,
-- Or whether, when the orc her body hent,
Her dread so mastered her, she screamed for fear,
-- Or that her hair escaped from neck or brow,
Was known; nor can I well inform you how.

LVII
"So were we all intent on our own case,
We for another's danger had no eyes:
Him, turning at the scream. I saw uncase
Already her whom he had made his prize,
And force her to the cavern to retrace
Her steps: we, couching in our quaint disguise,
Wend with the flock, where us the shepherd leads,
Through verdant mountains, into pleasant meads.

LVIII
"There we awaited, till beneath the shade
Secure, we saw the beaked orc asleep;
When one along th