Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 2 by Leigh Hunt
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page 25 of 371 (06%)
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counteraction of what he suspected, he summoned to his aid three spirits
out of the lower regions. But how serious his look turned, how his very soul within him was shaken, when he discovered that the most dreadful disasters hung over Charles and his court, and that the sister of the pretended Uberto was daughter of King Galafron of Cathay, a beauty accomplished in every species of enchantment, and sent there by her father on purpose to betray them all! Her brother's name was not Uberto, but Argalia. Galafron had given him a horse swifter than the wind, an enchanted sword, a golden lance, also enchanted, which overthrew all whom it touched,[3] and a ring of a virtue so extraordinary, that if put into the mouth, it rendered the person invisible, and if worn on the finger, nullified every enchantment. But beyond even all this, he gave him his sister for a companion; rightly judging, that every body that saw her would fall into the proposal of the joust; and trusting that, at the close of it, she would bring him the whole court of France into Cathay, prisoners in her hands. Such, Malagigi discovered, was the plot of the accursed infidel hound, King Galafron.[4] Meantime the pretended Uberto had returned to his station at the Horseblock of Merlin. He had had a beautiful pavilion pitched there; and under this pavilion he lay down awhile to refresh himself with sleep. His sister Angelica lay down also, but in the open air, under the great pine by the fountain. The four giants kept watch: and as she lay thus asleep, with her fair head on the grass, she appeared like an angel come down from heaven. By this time Malagigi, borne by one of his demons, had arrived in the same place. He saw the beauty asleep by the flowery water, and the four |
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