Melisendra

Melisendra is the captive wife at the center of the puppet-show story of her release by Don Gaiferos. In the account presented by Master Pedro’s interpreter, she is held by the Moors in Saragossa and identified as the daughter of Charlemagne; her captivity exposes her to her husband’s neglect before it drives him to undertake her rescue.

Identity and Story

The interpreter introduces Melisendra as Don Gaiferos’s wife, captured and held in the Moorish city called Sansuena in the old tale and identified with Saragossa. Charlemagne appears as her supposed father. These relationships belong to the legendary story being performed: they establish the family and marital bonds that make her captivity a matter of both personal danger and public honor.

Captivity and the Rescue Mission

The puppet episode begins with Don Gaiferos playing tables while Melisendra remains captive, a contrast that makes his inaction conspicuous. Charlemagne rebukes him for neglecting the duty to secure his wife’s release. Angered, Don Gaiferos casts aside the game and prepares to set out. He asks his cousin Roland for the use of Durindana, but Roland refuses the loan and offers to accompany him instead. Don Gaiferos declines the help, insisting that he will undertake the rescue alone, however difficult the journey.

Melisendra is shown on a balcony of the tower, dressed in Moorish fashion. Her position makes her captivity visible to the audience, while the interpreter’s account places the action within a familiar heroic plot: a wife’s confinement calls her husband to action, and his response is measured against the obligations of honor and kinship. The excerpt establishes the departure on the rescue mission, rather than detailing its outcome.

The Puppet-Show Frame

Melisendra’s story reaches the reader through a performance within the novel. Master Pedro is introduced as a traveling puppet-showman whose show presents the release of Melisendra by Don Gaiferos as a celebrated story. The interpreter says the episode comes from French chronicles and Spanish ballads, placing the characters within a tradition already shaped by repeated retelling.

That layered presentation matters: Melisendra is at once a character in a romance and a figure represented by puppets and explained by an interpreter to an audience. Her brief appearance on the tower supplies the visual focus, while the narration centers the scene on Don Gaiferos’s delayed response and decision to act. The episode therefore gives her captivity decisive narrative importance even as the available account offers little of her speech or perspective.