The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
now it shall be.'
"The damsel departed with this reply, which she repeated to those two princes. And the Queen Calafia asked her how the Christians appeared.
"'Very nobly,' replied she, 'for they are all handsome and well armed. Yet I tell you, Queen, that, among them, this Knight of the Serpent [Esplandian, son of Amadis] is such as neither the past nor the present, nor, I believe, any who are to come, have ever seen one so handsome and so elegant, nor will see in the days which are to be. O Queen, what shall I say to you, but that, if he were of our faith, we might believe that our Gods had made him with their own hands, with all their power and wisdom, so that he lacks in nothing?'
"The Queen, who heard her, said,—
"'Damsel, my friend, your words are too great.'
"'It is not so,' said she; 'for, excepting the sight of him, there is nothing else which can give account of his great excellence.'
"'Then I say to you,' said the Queen, 'that I will not fight with such a man until I have first seen and talked with him; and I make this request to the Sultan, that he will gratify me in this thing, and arrange that I may see him.'
"The Sultan said,—
"'I will do everything, O Queen, agreeably to your wish.'
"'Then,' said the damsel, 'I will go and obtain that which you ask for, according to your desire.'
"And turning her horse, she approached the camp again, so that all thought that she brought the agreement for the battle. But as she approached, she called the Kings to the door of the tent, and said,—
"'King Amadis, the Queen Calafia demands of you that you give order for her safe conduct, that she may come to-morrow morning and see your son.'
"Amadis began to laugh, and said to the Kings,—
"'How does this demand seem to you?'
"'I say, let her come,' said King Lisuarte; 'it is a very good thing to see the most distinguished woman in the world.'
"'Take this for your reply,' said Amadis to the damsel; 'and say that she shall be treated with all truth and honor.'
"The damsel, having received this message, returned with great pleasure to the Queen, and told her what it was. The Queen said to the Sultan,—
"'Wait and prosper, then, till I have seen him; and charge your people that in the mean time there may be no outbreak.'
"'Of that,' he said, 'you may be secure.'
"At once she returned to her ships; and she spent the whole night thinking whether she would go with arms or without them. But at last she determined that it would be more dignified to go in the dress of a woman. And when the morning came, she rose and directed them to bring one of her dresses, all of gold, with many precious stones, and a turban wrought with great art. It had a volume of many folds, in the manner of a toca, and she placed it upon her head as if it had been a hood [capellina]; it was all of gold, embroidered with stones of great value. They brought out an animal which she rode, the strangest that ever was seen. It had ears as large as two shields; a broad forehead which had but one eye, like a mirror; the openings of its nostrils were very large, but its nose was short and blunt. From its mouth turned up two tusks, each of them two palms long. Its color was yellow, and it had many violet spots upon its skin, like an ounce. It was larger than a dromedary, had its feet cleft like those of an ox, and ran as swiftly as the wind, and skipped over the rocks as lightly, and held itself erect on any part of them, as do the mountain-goats. Its food was dates and figs and peas, and nothing else. Its flank and haunches and breast were very beautiful. On this animal, of which you have thus heard, mounted this beautiful Queen, and there rode behind her two thousand women of her train, dressed in the very richest clothes. There brought up the rear twenty damsels clothed in uniform, the trains of whose dresses extended so far, that, falling from each beast, they dragged four fathoms on the ground.
"With this equipment and ornament the Queen proceeded to the Emperor's camp, where she saw all the Kings, who had come out upon the plain. They had seated themselves on very rich chairs, upon cloth of gold, and they themselves were armed, because they had not much confidence in the promises of the Pagans. So they sallied out to receive her at the door of the tent, where she was dismounted into the arms of Don Quadragante;4 and the two Kings, Lisuarte and Perion, took her by the hands, and placed her between them in a chair. When she was seated, looking from one side to the other, she saw Esplandian next to King Lisuarte, who held him by the hand; and from the superiority of his beauty to that of all the others, she knew at once who he was, and said to herself, 'Oh, my Gods! what is this? I declare to you, I have never seen any one who can be compared to him, nor shall I ever see any one.' And he turning his beautiful eyes upon her beautiful face, she perceived that the rays which leaped out from his resplendent beauty, entering in at her eyes, penetrated to her heart in such a way, that, if she were not conquered yet by the great force of arms, or by the great attacks of her enemies, she was softened and broken by that sight and by her amorous passion, as if she had passed between mallets of iron. And as she saw this, she reflected, that, if she stayed longer, the great fame which she had acquired as a manly cavalier, by so many dangers and labors, would be greatly hazarded. She saw that by any delay she should expose herself to the risk of dishonor, by being turned to that native softness which women of nature consider to be an ornament; and therefore resisting, with great pain, the feelings which she had subjected to her will, she rose from her seat and said,—
"'Knight of the Great Serpent, for two excellences which distinguish you above all mortals I have made inquiry. The first, that of your great beauty, which, if one has not seen, no relation is enough to tell the greatness of; the other, the valor and force of your brave heart. The one of these I have seen, which is such as I have never seen nor could hope to see, though many years of searching should be granted me. The other shall be made manifest on the field, against this valiant Radiaro, Sultan of Liquia. Mine shall be shown against this mighty king your father; and if fortune grant that we come alive from this battle, as we hope to come from other battles, then I will talk with you, before I return to my home, of some things of my own affairs.'
"Then, turning towards the Kings, she said to them,—
"'Kings, rest in good health. I go hence to that place where you shall see me with very different dress from this which I now wear, hoping that in that field the King Amadis, who trusts in fickle fortune that he may never be conquered by any knight, however valiant, nor by any beast, however terrible, may there be conquered by a woman.'
"Then taking the two older Kings by the hand, she permitted them to help her mount upon her strange steed."
At this point the novel assumes a tone of high virtue (virtus, mannishness, prejudice of the more brutal sex) on the subject of woman's rights, in especial of woman's right to fight in the field with gold armor, lance in rest, and casque closed. We will show the reader, as she follows us, how careful she must be, if, in any island of the sea which has been slipped by unknown by the last five centuries, she ever happen to meet a cavalier of the true school of chivalry.
Esplandian himself would not in any way salute the Queen Calafia, as she left him. Nor was this a copperhead prejudice of color; for that prejudice was not yet known.
"He made no reply to her, both because he looked at her as something strange, however beautiful she appeared to him, and because he saw her come thus in arms, so different from the style in which a woman should have come. For he considered it as very dishonorable that she should attempt anything so different from what the word of God commanded her, that the woman should be in subjection to the man, but rather should prefer to be the ruler of all men, not by her courtesy, but by force of arms, and, above all, because he hated to place himself in relations with her, because she was one of the infidels, whom he mortally despised and had taken a vow to destroy."
The romance then goes into an account of the preparations for the contest on both sides.
After all the preliminaries were arranged, "they separated for a little and rode together furiously in full career. The Sultan struck Esplandian in the shield with so hard a blow that a part of the lance passed through it for as much as an ell, so that all who saw it thought
Quadragante was a distinguished giant, who had been conquered by Amadis, and was now his sure friend.