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Not long after these events Sir Gawain returned from Brittany, and related to King Arthur the adventure which befell him in the forest of Breciliande, how Merlin had there spoken to him, and enjoined him to charge the king to go without delay upon the quest of the Holy Greal.
Then there entered into the hall the Holy Greal covered with white samite, but there was none might see it, nor who bare it. And there was all the hall fulfilled with good odours, and every knight had such meats and drinks as he best loved in this world.
Beyond the two or three hundred miles of snowy desert which lay before us we could see, in imagination, a shadowy stove-pipe rising out of a bank of snow the "San greal" of which we, as arctic knights-errant, were in search. I will not detain the reader long with the first part of our journey from Anadyrsk to the Pacific Coast, as it did not differ much from our previous Siberian experience.
The fictitious personages who indulge in licence are but dimly conscious of wrong-doing, and almost the only evidence of a realization of their fault is in the Quest of the Saint Gréal, when Launcelot and other noble knights acknowledge that the attainment of the sacred prize is not for them as being "sinful men," and the quest is achieved by the spotless Sir Galahad, who, impersonating the purifying influence of Christianity, forms the most striking character conceived by the fertile imagination of the Middle Ages.
"And he was in quest of the San Greal?" "If you like." "And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible San Blandish?" "Of course you consider it would have been so," sighed the lady, ruffling. "I can only judge by our generation," said Sir Austin, with a bend of homage. The lady gathered her mouth. "Either we are very mighty or you are very weak." "Both, madam."
The supernatural element is stronger perhaps in the story of the Saint Gréal than in any other romance, and the monkish inspiration of the work is everywhere manifest.
An inward grace seemed to stir within him from the moment when he took the oath to go on the quest of the Holy Greal; it seemed even to triumph over the power of the magic love-potion. The war, which had been quelled for a time, now burst out anew. Tristram as usual was foremost in every danger. The enemy was worsted in successive conflicts, and at last shut himself up in his principal city.
It was a great shock to Walter to learn that William Tell and Gelert were myths also; and the story of Bishop Hatto was to keep him awake all that night; but best of all he loved the stories of the Pied Piper and the San Greal. He read them thrillingly, while the bells on the Tree Lovers tinkled in the summer wind and the coolness of the evening shadows crept across the valley.
I have this same very day, which is the last both of May and of me, with a greal deal of labour, toil, and difficulty, chased out of my house a rabble of filthy, unclean, and plaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white, ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive importunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish stingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know not what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me out of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose myself and acquiesce in the contemplation and vision, yea, almost in the very touch and taste of the happiness and felicity which the good God hath prepared for his faithful saints and elect in the other life and state of immortality.
'Sir Galahad the Knight of the Siege Perilous who won the Saint Greal. 'What language is that? said Charles. 'What! Don't you know the Morte d'Arthur! I thought every one did! Don't you, Philip! 'I once looked into it. It is very curious, in classical English; but it is a book no one could read through. 'Oh! cried Guy, indignantly; then, 'but you only looked into it.
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