Ballads, Spanish; Legends -- Spain; Spanish literature -- History and criticism
When the treacherous Russians had accounted for the armies of the West,
they embarked for their own country, there to hatch fresh schemes for
the further disturbance of a harassed Europe. But Amadis of Greece was
in no mind that a people who owed so many debts to civilization (to
say nothing of vast pecuniary obligations) should escape unpunished for
their original adherence to the enemy. Pursuing them, but losing track
of their vessels, he came to the inevitable desert island, where he
resolved to stay and do penance for his infidelity to the Princess of
Sicily. Quite naturally, that lady herself landed on its shores, and,
after upbraiding her unfaithful lover, very sensibly advised him to
return to his sorrowing wife Niquea, which he at last consented to do.
When, after a reasonable interval, Amadis did not return to
Constantinople, the imperial city was in an uproar, and Florisel and
Falanges elected to go in quest of him. They arrived in time at the
island, where, under the assumed name of Moraizel, the former fell
in love with and espoused its queen, Sidonia, who, however, did not
scruple to show her preference for his companion. But Florisel soon
tired of his island bride, who bore him a beautiful little daughter,
Diana, destined to prove the heroine of the eleventh and twelfth
books of this interminable history.
Agesilan of Colchos
The young Agesilan of Colchos was prosecuting his studies at Athens
when he chanced to see a statue of the beauteous Diana. Irresistibly
attracted by it, he resolved to search for and behold the original,
so, donning the garb of a female minstrel, he fared to the Court of
Queen Sidonia, the royal maiden's mother. Here he was employed as a
companion to the princess. But when a succession of adventurous knights
arrived in the island he could not refrain from giving them battle
in the guise of an Amazon, with results invariably in his favour.
Learning from the Queen how she had been neglected by Florisel,
Agesilan obligingly offered to bring her the head of the erring
warrior, revealing, at the same time, his own personality. Sidonia,
who bore her husband a deep grudge for his desertion of her, readily
accepted his championship. So Agesilan repaired to Constantinople
and defied the recreant to mortal combat. It was arranged that the
encounter should take place in the dominions of Sidonia, but on
the would-be combatants arriving in these regions they found them
beleaguered by the ubiquitous Russians, who, not content with the
freedom of their own vast steppes, seem to have hankered after a
place in the sun in a more genial clime. It was scarcely fair to
the ebullient Slavs to launch two such renowned paladins upon them
at one and the same time, but, the brief battle over, victory seems
to have made Florisel and Sidonia forget their estrangement, and all
went merry as a marriage bell, Agesilan being duly affianced to Diana.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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