say, that it
had no sooner fallen than it disappeared. People got off their horses
to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being
left; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found as empty as
the shell that is cast by a lobster. O new, and strange, and portentous
event!--proof manifest of the anger with which God regards treachery.

When the first infidel army beheld their leader dead, such fear fell
upon them, that they were for leaving the field to the Paladins; but
they were unable. Marsilius had drawn the rest of his forces round the
valley like a net, so that their shoulders were turned in vain. Orlando
rode into the thick of them, with Count Anselm by his side. He rushed
like a tempest; and wherever he went, thunderbolts fell upon helmets.
The Paladins drove here and there after them, each making a whirlwind
round about him, and a bloody circle. Uliviero was again in the _melee_;
and Walter of Amulion threw himself into it; and Baldwin roared like
a lion; and Avino and Avolio reaped the wretches' heads like a
turnip-field; and blows blinded men's eyes; and Archbishop Turpin
himself had changed his crozier for a lance, and chased a new flock
before him to the mountains.

Yet what could be done against foes without number? Multitudes fill
up the spaces left by the dead without stopping. Marsilius, from his
anxious and raging post, constantly pours them in. The Paladins are as
units to thousands. Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto?

The horses did not tarry; but fate had been quicker than enchantment.
Ashtaroth, nevertheless, had presented himself to Rinaldo in Egypt, as
though he had issued out of a flash of lightning. After telling his
mission, and giving orders to hundreds of invisible spirits round about
him (for the air was full of them), he and Foul-Mouth, his servant,
entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh and
snort and leap with the fiends within them, till off they flew through
the air over the pyramids, crowds of spirits going like a tempest before
them. Ricciardetto shut his eyes at first, on perceiving himself so high
in the air; but he speedily became used to it, though he looked down
on the sun at last. In this manner they passed the desert, and the
sea-coast, and the ocean, and swept the tops of the Pyrenees, Ashtaroth
talking to them of wonders by the way; for he was one of the wisest of
the devils, and knew a great many