In a short time a jealous feud sprang up between the loving friends
Rinaldo and Orlando; and Angelica, torn with conflicting emotions, from
her dread on her father's account as well as her own, and her aversion
to every knight but her detester, was at one time compelled to apply to
Orlando for assistance, and at another, being afraid that he would have
the better of Rinaldo in combat, to send him away on a perilous adventure
elsewhere, with a promise of accepting his love should he succeed.[12]
Orlando went, but not before he had slain Agrican and delivered Albracca.
Circumstances, however, again took him with her to a distance, as the
reader will see, ere he could bring her to perform her promise; and the
Paladins in general having again been scattered abroad, it happened that
Rinaldo a second time found himself in the forest of Arden; and here,
without expecting it, he became an altered man; for he now tasted a very
different stream from that which had given him his hate for Angelica;
namely, the one which had made her fall in love with himself. He was led
to do this by a very extraordinary adventure.

In the thick of the forest he had come upon a mead full of flowers, in
which there was a naked youth, singing in the midst of three damsels, who
were naked also, and who were dancing round about him. They had bunches
of flowers in their hands, and garlands on their heads; and as they
were thus delighting themselves, with faces full of love and joy, they
suddenly changed countenance on seeing Rinaldo. "Behold," cried they, "the
traitor! Behold him, villain that he is, and the scorner of all delights!
He has fallen into the net at last." With these words they fell upon him
with the flowers like so many furies; and tender as such scourges might
be thought, every blow which the roses and violets gave him, every fresh
stroke of the lilies and the hyacinths, smote him to the very heart, and
filled his veins with fire. The flowers in the bands of the nymphs