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When the body is found and brought to Sebile, the water of her eyes falls down her chin. Ha, Guiteclin, said she, so gentle a man were you, liberal and free-spending, and of noble witness!
The caution is needed, for already the two sons of Guiteclin, with one hundred thousand Russians and Bulgarians, and the giant Ferabras of Russia, a personage twelve feet high, with light hair plaited together, reddish beard, and flattened face, are within a day and a halfs journey of Tremoigne, burning to avenge Guiteclin.
A bridge is built, the army passes over it, the Saxons are discomfited in a great battle, and Guiteclin is killed in single combat by Charlemagne himself. By this time the slender vein of historic truth which runs through the poem may be considered as quite exhausted.
Sebile, the wife of Guiteclin, is a peerless beauty, wise withal and courteous; hair had she long and fair, more than the shining gold, a brow polished and clear, eyes blue and laughing, a very well-made nose, teeth small and white, a savourous mouth, more crimson than blood; and in body and limbs so winning was she that God never made the man, howsoever old and tottering, if he durst look at her, but was moved with desire.
As in The Taking of Orange, it never seems to occur to the poet that there can be any moral wrong in making love to a Saracens wife, or in promising her hand in her husbands lifetime; and, strange to say, so benignant are these much-wronged paynim that Guiteclin is not represented as offering or threatening the slightest ill-treatment to his faithless queen, however wroth he may be against her lover; nor, indeed, as having even the sense to make her pitch her tent further from the bank.
However, with five thousand men he makes a vigorous attack on the vanguard of the Saxons, consisting of twenty thousand, and ends by putting them to flight. On the news of this repulse the two sons of Guiteclin come out, apparently with the bulk of the army. The French urge the young king to re-enter the city, but he refuses Sebile would hold him for a sleepy coward.
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