Book 6, Canto 4 Summary

The Salvage Man appears and saves the day, showing that an uneducated, ill-tutored, and even non-speaking man can be a gentle savage. Using natural herbs and grunting gestures, this preview of the Romantic's noble savage stands as a sharp contrast to the well-educated, yet horribly behaved Turpine. Sometimes even the simple people can be better than discourteous knights. While Serena heals, Calepine wanders in the woods (showing that he clearly has not learned a lesson from Serena's previous wood-walking disaster) and finds a bear in the progress of eating a baby. He kills the bear with a rock (somehow bypassing the teeth and shoving the rock down the bear's throat) and saves the baby. He is saved the trouble of figuring out what to do next when he meets Matilde, a lady whose husband is quite upset at her lack of...