XCIII.
Now that Gradasso learns Mount Alban’s peer
Is he, that storms the camp, in huge delight,
Armed, on Alfana leaps the cavalier[7],
And through the pitchy darkness seeks the knight,
O’erturning all who cross his fierce career,
He leaves afflicted and in piteous plight
The broken bands of Afric and of France.
All, food alike for his wide-wasting lance.
XCIV.
He seeks the paladin, now here now there,
Echoing his name as loud as he can shout;
And thitherward inclines his courser, where
The bodies are most thickly strown about.
At length encounter, sword to sword, the pair,
For broken are alike their lances stout;
Which shivering in their hands, had flown upright,
And smote the starry chariot of the Night.
XCV.
When King Gradasso recognized the foe,
Not by the blazoned bearing of his shield,
But by Bayardo—by that horrid blow,
Which made him seem sole champion of the field,
He to reproach the knight was nothing slow,
And of unworthy action him appealed;
In that he had not kept his ground and day,
Erewhile appointed for the fierce assay.
