Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/66

44 best of his seed (the knight who is to achieve the adventures of the Holy Grail). A voice answered his prayer should be granted, and then he should receive the light of his eyes and his wounds should be made whole. This happened four hundred (one hundred and four) years before, and it was that King Evelac whom Perceval had seen, and during that while he had fed on nought else save the Lord's body. (16) Perceval riding forth on the morrow is attacked by twenty knights, sore pressed, and only rescued by the Red Knight's help, who then disappears. (17) Perceval, having lost his horse, asks one vainly from a passing squire, from whom it is shortly afterwards carried off by another knight, whom Perceval, mounted on the squire's cob, attacks but is overthrown. (18) At night a woman appears and offers him a horse if he will do her will—she is, in truth, the enemy. He agrees, she mounts him, he comes to a river, and, before essaying to ford it, makes the sign of the cross, whereupon the horse rushes howling into the water. (19) Perceval, rescued from this peril, finds himself on a wild island mountain, full of savage beasts; he helps a lion against a snake and wins its service. He is ill at ease on his island, but he trusts God, and is not like those men of Wales where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed. (20) That night, sleeping by the lion's side, Perceval dreams of two women visiting him, one mounted on a lion, the second on a serpent; this one reproaches him for killing the serpent. On the morrow an old man comes ship-borne, comforts Perceval with good counsel, and interprets his dream: the dame on the lion was Christ's new law, she on the serpent the old law. (21) A damsel then appears, warns Perceval against the old man, prepares for him a rich banquet with good wine, not British, as in Great Britain they only drink cervoise and other home-made drinks, and excites his passion. He is on the point of yielding, but seeing the cross-handled pommel of his sword crosses himself, and the damsel disappears in flames. Perceval pierces his thigh with his sword in his contrition. The old man reappears, exhorts, explains the various features of his temptation, and finally takes him away with him in his ship. (22) The story now returns to Lancelot. After three exhortations from the hermit he sets forth, and first meets a servant, who assails him bitterly as an unfaithful traitorous knight, in that having openly seen the Holy Grail doing its wonders before him, he yet moved not from his seat. (23) He comes to a hermit's hut and finds the hermit lamenting over the dead body of his companion, who, at his nephew, Agaran's, request, had left the hermitage to aid him against his enemies, and had been treacherously slain by the latter. These things are told by a devil, which had entered into the dead hermit's body. Lancelot is admonished at great length, receives stripes, puts on the dead hermit's hair shirt, and finally leaves with the advice that he should confess every week. (24) He meets a damsel who encourages him, but tells him he will find no lodging for the night.