Olindo touches the weaker fibers of our sympathy by his feminine devotion to a woman placed above him in the moral scale, whose love he wins by splendid falsehood equal to her own.
The episode, entirely idle in the action of the poem, has little to recommend it, if we exclude the traditionally accepted reference to Tasso's love for Leonora d'Este.

But when Olindo and Sofronia are standing, back to back, against the stake, Aladino, who has decreed their death by burning, feels his rude bosom touched with sudden pity: Un non so che d'inusitato e molle Par che nel duro petto al re trapasse: Ei presentillo, e si sdegno; ne voile Piegarsi, e gli occhi torse, e si ritrasse (ii.

37).
The intrusion of a lyrical emotion, unknown before in the tyrant's breast, against which he contends with anger, and before the force of which he bends, prepares us for the happy _denouement_ brought about by Clorinda.

This vague stirring of the soul, this _non so che_, this sentiment, is the real agent in Sofronia's release and Olindo's beatification.
Clorinda is about to march upon her doom.

She is inflamed with the ambition to destroy the engines of the Christian host by fire at night; and she calls Argante to her counsels: Buona pezza e, signor, che in se raggira Un non so che d'insolito e d'audace La mia mente inquieta; o Dio l'inspira, O l'uom del suo voler suo Dio si face (xii.