unlikely than the other, which assigns to it as its end and unity the war between Carlo and Agramante. In any case, this motive is placed second in the protasis to the _Furioso,_ where the first word is not by chance "women," and the first verse ends with "loves" (and in the first edition we even read: "The ancient loves of ladies and of knights"); and the scene with which the poem opens is the flight of Angelica, who is immediately met by Sacripante and Rinaldo who are in love with her, and that with which it concludes is the marriage feast of Ruggiero and Bradamante, disturbed yet heightened in its solemnity of celebration by the incident of the duel with Rodomonte. Love matter dominates in the _Furioso,_ because it dominated in the heart of Ariosto, where it easily passed over into more noble feelings, into piety that goes beyond the tomb, into justice rendered to calumniated innocence, into kindness ill-recompensed, into admiration for the sacred tie of friendship. Hence, in marked contrast to the beautiful Doralice, so crudely sensual, that when her lover's body is still warm, she is capable of looking with desire upon his slayer, the valiant Ruggiero, Isabella deliberately decides upon putting herself to death that she may keep faith with her dead lover; and Fiordiligi, whose pretty little face, upon which still flitters something of the impudence attributed to her by Boiardo, becomes furrowed with anguish and sublime with sorrow, when she apprehends the loss of Brandimarte. And Olympia stands by the side of Ginevra, trapped and drawn to the brink of ruin by a wicked man, and is rescued by Rinaldo, the righter of wrongs, Olympia whom Orlando twice saves, the second time not only from death, but from desperation at the desertion of her most thankless husband. Zerbino, brother of Ginevra and lover of Isabella, is a flower of nobility among the knights. He alone understands and pities the affectionate deed of Medoro, careless of his own life and absorbed in the anxiety to obtain burial for the body of his lord. When his former friend who has shown himself to be a most infamous traitor, is dragged before him in chains, he cannot find it in him to inflict upon him the death he deserves, for he remembers their long and close friendship. Devoted to the greatness of Orlando and in gratitude for what he had done in saving and taking care of Isabella, he collects the arms of the Paladin, scattered at the outbreak of his madness, and sustains a combat with Mandricardo for these arms, dying rather for sorrow at not having been able to defend them than from his wound. Cloridano and Medoro, Orlando and Brandimarte, are other idealisations of a friendship which lasts beyond the tomb; and anyone searching the poem for motives of commiseration and indignation for oppressed virtue, for unhappy peoples trodden beneath the heel of the tyrant, robbed, tortured and allowed to perish like cattle and goats, would find other