The Ninth Book carries on the adventures and exploits of the race of Amadis, who in more senses than one may be said to be immortal. It was first published in 1535 at Burgos, a place of many literary associations, and purports to have been imitated in Latin from the Greek, after the manner of the famous Troy romance Dares and Dictys, and at a later time translated into the Romance language by the potent and wise magician Alquife, evidently a supposititious Moor pressed into the service of the most imaginative but undisciplined writer who fabricated it. Amadis of Greece, indeed, approaches the sublime of imaginative excess and fictional unreason, and in its extravagant pages we are confronted with such a maze of marvel that to provide an intelligent account of it is a task of no little difficulty. Following the wild career of the romancer with the halting step of modern incredulity, we learn that Amadis of Greece was, like his forbears, a child unwanted, the son of Lisuarte and Onoloria, Princess of Trebizond, born shortly after the period of their interrupted wedding. While the infant was being baptized at a fountain in a wild and deserted place, to which he had been conveyed for the purposes of secrecy, he was carried off by corsairs, who sold him to the Moorish King of Saba. Distinguished by the representation of a sword upon his breast, he adopted the name, when knighted by the pagan monarch, of 'The Knight of the Flaming Sword.' Soon after he had entered the ranks of chivalry he was falsely accused of cherishing a secret love for the Queen of Saba, and, dreading the wrath of his benefactor, he made his escape, and embarked upon a career of adventure--which, indeed, it would have been difficult for anyone of his lineage to have avoided. A pagan in religion and sentiment, he came to the vicinity of the Forbidden Mountain which his grandfather had been instrumental in liberating from the clutches of the infidel, and, reversing the pious work then accomplished, he defeated and expelled those who held it for the Emperor of Greece. Aroused by the menacing turn events had taken, the great Esplandian himself, now Emperor of Constantinople, hastened to the scene of hostilities and engaged in single combat with the doughty new-comer, only, however, to suffer defeat at his hands, an event which never could have entered into the calculation of the enthusiastic author who composed the romance of that hero, who would have been horrified at the mere thought of the eclipse of his invincible 'star.' Shortly after this Amadis encountered the King of Sicily. Their acquaintance commenced with a combat, as it was indeed essential that it should, as the only fitting means of introduction between gentlemen of errant tendencies, but when they came to know and esteem each other they patched up a comradeship which was the more powerfully cemented by the passion of Amadis for the martial monarch's lovely daughter.