stancia! Fair Constancia! where are you?—I seek for you, and call on you in vain!—How much longer must we be separated?" His lamentations and complaints were wasted on the empty air. He returned to the ship, his heart pierced with grief, and his eyes full of tears.
One evening, that they had cast anchor under a great rock, he landed as usual on the beach; but as the country was unknown, and the night very dark, those who accompanied him refused to advance far inland, fearing they might perish there. The Prince, who cared little for his life, however, set forward, falling and scrambling up again a hundred times; at length he perceived a great light, which appeared to proceed from some fire. As he approached he heard much noise, and the sound of hammers, which seemed to be giving tremendous blows. Far from feeling alarmed, he hastened onwards, and came to a large forge, open on all sides, and in which there was a furnace glowing so intensely, that it seemed as if the sun was blazing in the centre of it; thirty giants, each with only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, were at work fabricating armour and weapons.
Constancio approached, and said to them, "If you can feel compassion, amongst all the iron and fire that surround you; if, by accident, you have seen the fair Constancia, who has been carried off as a slave by some merchants, land on this coast, tell me where I can find her, and ask all I possess in the world, I will give it you with pleasure." He had scarcely finished his little oration, when the noise, which had ceased on his appearance, recommenced louder than ever. "Alas!" said he, "my sorrow moves ye not! Barbarians!—I have nothing to hope from you!"
He was turning away, when he heard a sweet symphony which enchanted him; and looking towards the furnace he saw, issuing from it, the most beautiful Boy that imagination could picture; he was more brilliant than the fire out of which he came. As soon as Constancio had remarked his charms, the bandage that covered his eyes, the bow and arrows that he bore, he felt sure it was Cupid; and so, in fact, it was, who called to him: "Stay, Constancio! thou burnest with too pure a flame for me to refuse thee my assistance. I am Virtuous Love. It was I who wounded thee for the fair Constancia, and it is I who now defend her from the Giant
