Rossaura, a lady dressed as a man, opens the first scene from the top of a mountain in Poland, where she curses the horse that has just thrown her off: “you’re as ill-conceived as a bolt of lightning without flame” (91). She laments her situation to Bugle, her servant with whom she is traveling, and he responds with a reminder that together, they make “two unlucky wretches” (91), who “left [their] fatherland to seek adventures” (91). As Rossaura and Bugle commiserate in their misery and frustration, they spy “a palace so insignificant that even the sunlight barely reaches it” (92). They investigate the tower, which is so crudely built, it “could pass for a boulder that rolled off the mountaintop,” (92), and enter its open door. When they hear “the sound of a chain,” (92), they believe that the building is haunted, until further exploration reveals a “a dark prison that serves as grave to a living corpse […] a man bound in chains and accompanied only by the light” (93). Rossaura and Bugle listen to the man, speaking to himself, and they learn that he does not know the reason for his imprisonment. In his confusion, he compares himself to birds, beasts and fish that all enjoy freedom to live as they wish.