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Gan himself, meantime, had hastened on to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on the Paladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers.
Not the less, however, for this, did the Paladins continue to fight as if with joy. They killed and trampled wheresoever they went; Rinaldo fatiguing himself with sending infinite numbers of souls to Ashtaroth, and Orlando making a bloody passage towards Marsilius, whom he hoped to settle as he had done Falseron.
Gan was received with great honor by Marsilius. The king, attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Saragossa to meet him, and then conducted him into the city with acclamations. There was nothing for several days but balls, games, and exhibitions of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French knights, and the people shouting, "France! Mountjoy and St. Denis!"
The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court of France tribute; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited in this particular instance, and his known villany at all times, had succeeded in persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando.
Again fled the Saracens, never to come to Christendom more: but Charles went after them into Spain, he and Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and the good Turpin; and they took and fired Saragossa; and Marsilius was hung to the carob-tree under which he had planned his villany with Gan; and Gan was hung, and drawn and quartered, in Roncesvalles, amidst the execrations of the country.
Baldwin himself has a vest given him by Marsilius, that every body may know the son of his friend Gan, and do him no injury. See there look how the lances avoid him." "Put your helmet on again," said Orlando, "and behave just as you have done. Never will your father's friend be an enemy to the son. Only take care not to come across Rinaldo."
Would to God you had attended to what I said; to what Malagigi said; to what we all said! I told you Marsilius was nothing but an anointed scoundrel. Yet forsooth, he was to bring us tribute! and Charles is this moment expecting his mummeries at St. John Pied de Port! Did ever any body believe a word that Gan said, but Charles?
Marsilius, as well as Gan, was appalled at this omen; but on assembling his soothsayers they came to the conclusion that the laurel-tree turned the omen against the Emperor, the successor of the Caesars, though one of them renewed the consternation of Gan by saying that he did not understand the meaning of the tree of Judas, and intimating that perhaps the ambassador could explain it.
"'Tis strange," said Baldwin, "I have done my duty as well as I could, yet nobody will come against me. I have slain right and left, and cannot comprehend what it is that makes the stoutest infidels avoid me." "Take off your vest," said Orlando, contemptuously, "and you will soon discover the secret, if you wish to know it. Your father has sold us to Marsilius, all but his honorable son."
Marsilius understood him; and as he resumed the conversation, and gradually encouraged a mutual disclosure of their thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was enabled to do so by contemplating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its expression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime, saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan.
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