o seek?'
Olivier answered, 'I hear thee speak,
But I see thee not; God seeth thee.
Have I struck thee, brother, forgive it me?'
'I am not hurt, O Olivier;
And in sight of God, I forgive thee here.'
Then to each other his head hath laid,
And in love like this was their parting made."

With hands clasped Sir Olivier cries to God for admittance into
Paradise, and for a blessing on "King Karl and France the fair," and
above all on his brother Roland. Then his hands fall, his head sinks on
his breast, and he passes away. Filled with grief, Roland murmurs:

"So many days and years gone by
We lived together.
And thou hast never done me wrong.
Since thou art dead, to live is pain."

Once more Roland turns to where Count Walter of Hum and the archbishop
alone stand at bay:

"And the heathen cries, 'What a felon three!
Look to it, lords, that they shall not flee.'"

[Illustration: Roland at Roncesvalles.]

Count Walter falls at last, just as they hear the welcome sound of
Charlemagne's trumpets, at which the Saracens flee, leaving Roland and
the archbishop unconquered. But their end is near. Roland swoons, and
the good archbishop, in attempting to bring water in the famous horn
for the dying Paladin, falls from loss of blood. Roland recovers only in
time to see him die; then, as he feels that death is near him also, he
looks once more on his goodly sword Durindana, and as he looks he cries:

"Oh fair and holy, my peerless sword,
What relics lie in thy pommel stored--
Tooth of St. Peter, Saint Basil's blood,
Hair of St. Denis beside them strewed,
Fragment of Holy Mary's vest--
'Twere shame that thou with the heathen rest,
Thee should the hand of a Christian serve,
One who should never in battle swerve."

In despair lest it fall into pagan hands he tries to break it in pieces,
and the mighty slashes he made in the rocks are still pointed out as the
"Breche de Roland." You remember Wordsworth's lines:

"the Pyrenean breach,
Which Roland clove with huge two-handed sway,
And to the enormous labor left his name,
Where unremitting frost the rocky crescents bleach."

Surely Roland might now rest from his labors, amid the "flowerets of
Paradise." But no; he had yet to smash the head of a prowling Saracen
who thought him an easy prey. In doing so he spoiled forever the ivory
horn, his only weapon. Not till then could he clasp his h