NOTES TO CANTO II.
A thief thyself, if Fame the truth reports.
Stanza iv. line 3.
Such accusations are frequent in the Innamorato, and seem, as well as the adventure in the Fata Morgana’s garden, where Rinaldo’s rapacious conduct is contrasted with the disinterestedness of Orlando, to justify Sancho in stigmatizing the son of Aymon and his followers as “greater thieves than Cacus.” In fact, Renaud de Montauban, or Rinaldo di Mont’ Albano, appears to have been the governor of a fortress on the Spanish frontier, and was probably distinguished by what may be considered as the most characteristic attribute of a borderer. Stripped of the gaudier trappings with which romance has invested him, he was, perhaps, much the same sort of person as a distinguished modern author has exhibited to us in the Scotts and Musgraves of the Border Minstrelsy.
Though passing thick, Fusberta cleaves it.
Stanza x. line 5.
Fusberta is the name of Rinaldo’s sword. See the Innamorato, passim.
