reclined himself on the grass, not far from the other, just as if
they had been friends, Orlando by the fountain, Agrican beneath a
pine. It was a beautiful clear night, and, as they talked together
before addressing themselves to sleep, the champion of
Christendom, looking up at the firmament, said, "That is a fine
piece of workmanship, that starry spectacle; God made it all, that
moon of silver, and those stars of gold, and the light of day, and
the sun,--all for the sake of human kind."

"You wish, I see, to talk of matters of faith," said the Tartar.
"Now I may as well tell you at once that I have no sort of skill
in such matters, nor learning of any kind. I never could learn
anything when I was a boy. I hated it so that I broke the man's
head who was commissioned to teach me; and it produced such an
effect on others that nobody ever afterwards dared so much as show
me a book. My boyhood was therefore passed, as it should be, in
horsemanship and hunting, and learning to fight. What is the good
of a gentleman's poring all day over a book? Prowess to the
knight, and preaching to the clergyman, that is my motto."

"I acknowledge," returned Orlando, "that arms are the first
consideration of a gentleman; but not at all that he does himself
dishonor by knowledge. On the contrary, knowledge is as great an
embellishment of the rest of his attainments, as the flowers are
to the meadow before us; and as to the knowledge of his Maker, the
man that is without it is no better than a stock or a stone or a
brute beast. Neither without study can he reach anything of a due
sense of the depth and divineness of the contemplation."

"Learned or not learned," said Agrican, "you might show yourself