There was a suffering inside him that made Orlando burn with intense desire and freeze with jealousy at the same time, the poem says; and he did not know how to fight off this strange illness, which he had never before experienced. His sword Durindana was of no use here. It even occurred to him that another could reach Angelica first and have his way with her in that forest! Perhaps his cousin Ranaldo, that rascal and womanizer, was on her heels; surely he wasn't going to let the maiden run away!
"But what use is it to lie here crying like a woman in pain?" Orlando said to himself. "Do I believe, perhaps, that by hiding here I can conceal the flame that gnaws at my chest? I don't want to die of this shame, which tortures me whole. As God is my witness, when the night comes I will leave Paris and search for that lovely face far and wide until I find it, be it summer or winter!"
At nightfall he began to dress. He decided against putting on his red and white checkered crest of the Vermilion quarter, the one everyone knew, and dressed instead in dark clothing. This way he was unrecognizable when he had the helmet on his head, buried completely inside the armor. Thus, incognito, he went out of the city into the night. Riding his horse Brigliadoro, without servant or squire, Orlando set out sighing in search of the beautiful Angelica. Like Ranaldo and Ferraguto before him, he headed towards the Ardenne forest.
