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Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 2 by Leigh Hunt
page 36 of 371 (09%)
being exhausted, the youth gave him a blow on the helmet with a tall
garden-lily, which felled him to the earth; and so, taking him by the
legs, and dragging him over the grass, his conqueror went the whole
circuit of the mead with him, the nymphs taking the very garlands off
their heads, and again scourging him with their white and red roses.[13]

At the close of this discipline, which left him more exhausted than
twenty battles, his enemies suddenly developed wings from their
shoulders, the feathers of which were of white and gold and vermilion,
every feather having an eye in it, not like those in the peacock's
feathers, but one full of life and motion, being a female eye, lovely and
gracious. And with these wings they poised themselves a little, and so
sprung up to heaven.[14]

The Paladin, more dead than alive, lay helpless among the flowers, when a
fourth nymph came up to him, of inexpressible beauty. She told him that
he had grievously offended the naked youth, who was no other than Love
himself; and added, that his only remedy was to be penitent, and to drink
of the waters of a stream hard by, which he would find running from the
roots of an olive-tree and a pine. With these words, she vanished in her
turn like the rest; and Rinaldo, dragging himself as well as he could to
the olive and pine, stooped down, and greedily drank of the water. Again
and again he drank, and wished still to be drinking, for it took not only
all pain out of his limbs, but all hate and bitterness out of his soul,
and produced such a remorseful and doating memory of Angelica, that he
would fain have galloped that instant to Cathay, and prostrated himself
at her feet. By degrees he knew the place; and looking round about him,
and preparing to remount his horse, he discerned a knight and a lady in
the distance. The knight was in a coat of armour unknown to him, and the
lady kneeling and drinking at a fountain, which was the one that had
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