The process of "destruction" effected upon the material may possibly be rendered clear to those who do not appreciate philosophical formulas or find them too difficult, by means of the comparison with what in the technique of painting is called "concealing a colour," which does not mean its cancellation, but its toning down. In such an equally distributed toning down, all the sentiments which go to form the web of the poem, not only preserve their own physiognomy, but their reciprocal proportions and connections; so that although they certainly appear in the "transparent polished glasses" and in the "smooth shining waters" of the octaves, pale as "pearls on a white forehead" to the sight, yet they retain their distinctness and are more or less strong according to the greater or less strength which they possessed in the soul of the poet. The comic, at once lowered and raised, nevertheless remains comical, the sublime remains sublime, the voluptuous voluptuous, the reflective reflective, and so on. And sometimes it happens that Ariosto reaches the boundary, which if he were to pass, he would abandon his own tone, but he never does abandon it, because he always refrains from passing the boundary. Everyone remembers the most emotional words and passages of the _Furioso_: Medoro, who, when surrounded and surprised by his enemies, makes a sort of tower of himself, using the trees as a shield, and never abandoning the body of his lord, Zerbino, who feels penetrated with pity and stays his hand as he looks on his beautiful countenance, when on the point of slaying him; Zerbino, who when about to die, is desperate at leaving his Isabella alone, the prey of unknown men, while she bursts into tears and speaks sweet words of eternal faithfulness; Fiordiligi, who hears the news, or rather divines the death of her husband ... We always catch our breath, and something--I know not what--comes into our eyes, as we repeat these and similar verses. Here is Fiordiligi, who shudders as she feels the presentiment:
E questa novità d' aver timore le fa tremar di doppia tema il core.[9]
The fatal news comes to hand: Astolfo and Sansonetto, the two friends who happen to be where she has remained, hide it from her for an hour or so, and then decide to betake themselves to her that they may prepare her for the misfortune that has befallen: