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Belinda sails along the river Thames, and everyone is dazzled by her beauty. She is wearing a bejeweled cross which is so sparkling that even “Jews” and “infidels” would want to kiss it. She smiles at everyone and her eyes are luminous, “Bright as the sun.” She is so beautiful that any “female errors” she might make would be instantly forgotten when anyone looked on her face. Belinda’s hair, “to the destruction of mankind,” is styled into two beautiful curls. These locks of hair are so attractive that any man who looks on them is overcome with desire for her—the curls are “labyrinths” in which Love “detains” his “slaves,” binding men’s hearts in “slender chains.” The Baron is one such man, and he resolves to take one lock, either through trickery or by force. Earlier that day, before the sun rose, the Baron prayed to Love for success in gaining his “prize” by building a pyre out of various objects associated with love, including volumes of French romances, “garters,” “gloves,” and love letters. The pyre is a reference to both pagan religious tradition and the epic tradition. Pyres were normally built for funerary purposes, but here the Baron is using his pyre to burn trivial items like “garters” and “gloves” in order to pray to the god Love. In this way, Pope continues his parody of court life. This moment also recalls the female vanity of Belinda’s own pagan altar, fashioned from her dressing table. In Pope’s time, men were expected to be morally and intellectually superior to women, but the parallel between the Baron’s frivolous pyre and Belinda’s dressing table altar paints the two as being morally equivalent in their frivolity. Ariel explains to the assembled group that he just can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is going to happen. He doesn’t know what it is, but he’s worried that it could be anything from Belinda losing her virginity to staining her new dress to losing her heart or a necklace at a ball. To protect Belinda, Ariel assigns various sylphs different tasks. Zephyretta will look after her fan, Brillante will look after her earrings, Momentilla will look after her watch, Crispissa will look after her lock, and Ariel himself will look after her Shock. Fifty sylphs will look after Belinda’s petticoat, which is described as the “sevenfold fence” “stiff with hoops” and “armed with ribs of whale,” “the silver bound” with a “wide circumference.” Ariel completes his speech by explaining that, should anyone fail to look after their charge, they shall be severely punished. Quickly, all of them fall in line and await the dreaded event Ariel has predicted.