Amandus

Amandus is the captive lover in a miniature romance of separation, endurance, and reunion. His story, paired with Amanda’s, is presented as the kind of tale that can feed a tender imagination more deeply than the antiquarian material travelers gather: its long pursuit ends in an encounter so overwhelming that both lovers die of joy.

Identity and Separation

Amandus and Amanda are lovers parted by cruel parents and what the narrative calls still crueler destiny. They lose sight of each other’s course: he travels east, she west. Their separation is thus both intimate and geographical, sending each away from the other without knowledge of where the other has gone.

Captivity and the Search

Amandus is captured by the Turks and taken to the court of the emperor of Morocco. The emperor’s daughter falls in love with him and keeps him imprisoned for twenty years because of his devotion to Amanda. Meanwhile, Amanda wanders barefoot over rocks and mountains, asking after him from place to place. Her search gives the romance its prolonged movement: neither the distance nor the years resolve their attachment.

Reunion and Ending

Chance brings them, by different routes and at the same moment of night, to the gate of Lyons, their native city. There they call to learn whether the other is still alive, recognize one another’s familiar voices, and fall into each other’s arms. Both die from joy. The reunion fulfills the lovers’ search but offers no subsequent life together; the story’s emotional climax is also its ending.

Narrative Function

The episode is introduced as an example of the stories that make a particular impression when the brain is tender and receptive. Its lovers’ eastward and westward separation, Amandus’s twenty-year captivity, Amanda’s repeated search, and their simultaneous return to Lyons turn distance and duration into the measure of fidelity. Their deaths make the reunion an extreme conclusion, while the framing reflection emphasizes the story’s imaginative and emotional force rather than its historical authority.