_Or sopra avendo il giovane Ruggiero, Piu vaga cosa nun si vide mai. Chi guardasse il cavallo e'l cavaliero Starebbe a dar giudicio in dubbio assai, Se fusser vivi, o fatti col pennello, Tanto era l'un e l'altro egregio e bello._[3] [Footnote 3: ORLANDO INAMORATO.] Nobs was not like that horse now living at Brussels, who is fond of raw flesh, and getting one day out of his stable found his way to a butcher's shop and devoured two breasts of mutton, mutton it seems being his favourite meat. If his pedigree could be traced we might expect to find that he was descended from the anthropophagous stud of that abominable Thracian King whom Hercules so properly threw to his own horses for food. Nor was he like that other horse of the same execrable extraction, whom in an evil day Rinaldo, having won him in battle, sent as a present by the damsel Hipalca to Ruggiero,—that Clarion _A quien el cielo con rigor maldixo, Y una beldad le diò tan codiciada;_ that fatal horse who as soon as Ruggiero mounted him, carried his heroic master into the ambush prepared for him in which he was treacherously slain. The tragedy not ending there, for one of the traitors took this horse for his reward and his proper reward he had with him _Púsole el traidor pernas, corrió el fuerte Desenfrenado potro hasta arrojallo, En medio de la plaza de Marsella, A ojos de Bradamante, y su doncella._ _Alli en presencia suyo hecho pedazos Al Magancés dexó el caballo fiero: Viendole Hipalca muerto entre los brazos, Y no en su silla qual penso a Rugero, Notorios vió los cavilosos lazos Del fementido bando de Pontiero. Alteróse la bella Bradamante Y el sobresalto le abortó un infante._ _Y al quinto dia con la nueva cierta De la muerte infeliz del paladino, La antes dudosa amante quedó muerta, Y cumplido el temor del adivino. Y por tantas desgracias descubierta La traicion de Maganza, un rio sanguino Labró Morgana, y de la gente impia Cien falsos Condes degolló en un dia._[4] _eso quieren decir las desgracias del Caballo Clarion_, says the author of this poem El Doctor Don Bernardo de Balbuena, in the allegory which he annexes to the Canto, _que la fuerza de las estrellas predomina en los brutos, y en la parte sensitiva, y no en el albedrio humano y voluntad racional._ [Footnote 4: BALBUENA.]