Galaor, Florestan, and Agrayes, hearing of Amadis's plight and his hurried departure, resolved to follow him. Meanwhile the object of their search rode onward, allowing his horse to choose its own path, and given over to weeping and lamentation. While the anxious Gandalin slept, the crazed lover eluded him, and traversed the wildest parts of the savage country which they had penetrated. Ere long he came to a plain at the foot of a mountain, where he encountered a hermit, and begged the holy man for leave to remain with him. The hermit greeted him kindly, and Amadis confided his history to the good old man, who told him that he dwelt on a high rock full seven leagues out at sea. And the hermit gave him the name Beltenebros, or 'the Fair Forlorn,' as he was at once so comely and so sore distracted. The Poor Rock In due time they reached the sea-shore, and, giving his horse to the mariners, Amadis accompanied the hermit on board a vessel and sailed to the Poor Rock, as the holy man had named his place of hermitage. And here Amadis partook of the austerities of the hermit, "not for devotion but for despair, forgetting his great renown in arms and hoping and expecting death--all for the anger of a woman!" Durin, Oriana's messenger, journeyed back to the British Court and told his mistress how Amadis had received her letter, and of the manner in which her knight had achieved the adventure of the Firm Island. Then Oriana knew that Amadis must have remained true to her. When she learned that he had gone into the desert to die, her shame and anguish knew no bounds, and she wrote a letter of deep contrition to her lover, and dispatched it to him by one of her women called 'the Damsel of Denmark,' a sister of Durin. After they had set out, the knight whom Amadis had vanquished on the evening of the day on which he learned of Oriana's cruelty arrived at the British Court, bringing with him the armour of Amadis, which he had found, some time after his encounter with him, at the edge of a deep fountain. And when she heard his story Oriana believed her lover to be dead, and in great grief shut herself in her apartments, refusing all comfort. Meanwhile, calling to mind the great misery he had endured, Amadis made this song in his passion: Farewell to victory, To warlike glory and to knightly play. Ah, wherefore should I live to weep and sigh? Far greater honour would it be to die! With kindly death my wretchedness shall cease, And from my torments shall I find release. Love will be unremembered in the shade, The deep unkindness of a cruel maid, Who in her pride hath slain not me alone, But all the deeds for glory I have done! [40]