The Seven Champions of ChristendomKingston, William Henry Giles
Science
The Seven Champions of Christendom
Kingston, William Henry Giles
Christian saints
"The bells toll for the King's seven daughters. There are seven bells,
each one called after the name of a Princess, which never have ceased
this doleful melody since the loss of the unhappy ladies, nor ever will
till they return."
"Then their tasks are finished," answered the noble-minded Rosalinde.
"We bring you tidings of the Princesses."
Whereat the aged porter, ravished with joy, ran to the steeple and
stopped the bells. Hearing the bells cease their wonted mournful
melody, up started the King of Georgia, and hastened to the gate to
inquire the cause. There, to his joy, he beheld his long-lost daughter
in company with a strange knight and attendant squire. Hearing the
wonderful tale, he commanded all his courtiers to put on the lugubrious
weeds of mourning, and to accompany him to the castle of the Giant, that
there perchance he might discover some means of releasing his six other
daughters, while the noble-minded Rosalinde and Saint Anthony were left
to take care of the city till his return.
When the King of Georgia, after long delay, did not return, the Italian
Knight declared, in impassioned words, that he must proceed in search of
those adventures for the sake of which he had left his native land. To
this the noble-minded Rosalinde replied:--
"Oh! most princely-minded Champion of Italy! It is not Georgia can
harbour me when thou art absent. The sky shall be no sky, the sea no
sea, the earth no earth, if thou do prove inconstant; but if you will
not take me with you, these tender hands of mine shall hang upon your
horse's bridle, till my body, like Theseus's son, be dashed against the
hard flint stones; yet, hard as they are, not harder than I shall deem
your heart."
One only reply to this appeal could the princely-minded Champion make.
It was to tell her that he would bear her away forthwith as his own true
bride. And they thus both being agreed, habited as a page in green
sarcenet, her buskins of the smoothest kid-skin, and her rapier of
Lydian steel, secured over her shoulder by an orange-coloured scarf, and
mounted on a gentle palfrey, she quitted the land of Georgia; one of her
maidens, habited also in page's guise, attending, whom Niccolo took
under his especial care. Thus they travelled; he the bravest, boldest
knight that ever wandered by the way, and she the loveliest lady that
ever mortal eye beheld.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE ADVENTURES OF SAINT ANDREW OF SCOTLAND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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