THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 PARSIVAL
 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 KJEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 PARSIVAL 
 
 BY 
 GERHARD HAUPTMANN 
 
 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION 
 BY 
 
 OAKLEY WILLIAMS 
 
 Niw f nrk 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 I9IS 
 
 All rights resetted
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1915 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1915.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 TT 
 
 PARSIVAL 
 
 1157147
 
 PARSIVAL 
 
 ARSIVAL'S mother's name was 
 Heartache. I should hate to make 
 anyone feel sad, but I believe we 
 might call every mother, or at any 
 rate, very, very many mothers by this name. 
 What Heartache's other name was, and of what 
 stock she came, we do not know. Some people 
 say that her family was of knightly degree, others 
 speak of her as a peasant woman, so Parsival 
 in his youth, would have then been nothing 
 more than a common country lad. Of whatever 
 stock he might be, Parsival himself knew noth- 
 ing about it, and his mother, who may well have 
 known, never said a word to him on the matter. 
 Her name was not Heartache for nothing. 
 
 Parsival's early childhood was very happy, 
 for Heartache lived in a little log hut, hidden
 
 2 Parsival 
 
 deep in the solitude of the woods: a hut that 
 Heaven knows who had built for her. Maybe 
 Heartache herself had built it, for she was deft 
 in handling not only the spade and hoe, but the 
 axe as well, and, furthermore, Parsival had 
 never set eyes on human being other than her. 
 "There is no work Heartache shirks," was a 
 favourite adage of hers. 
 
 Parsival was very fond of his mother, and was, 
 as I have said, very happy under her care, al- 
 though she was not gay and was never able to 
 laugh whole-heartedly, but at best force a 
 painful smile to her lips. The merry, sturdy 
 boy gave it no further thought; he enjoyed his 
 meals, felt safe and snug when his mother had 
 tucked him up in bed, and in the day-time made 
 the little herb and flower garden round about 
 the house, the forest and green solitude all 
 around his splendid playground. 
 
 Parsival passed the first twelve or thirteen, 
 or maybe, even fourteen years of his life in the 
 games of childhood. Every child knows what 
 games mean, and that they are just about the 
 most precious thing in the world. As for the
 
 Parsival 3 
 
 grown-ups, many of them have, I am sorry to 
 say, become wholly unknowledgeable in this 
 matter. Now and then, one or other of the 
 grown-ups who is able to value games at their 
 proper worth, has troubled his head about the 
 deeper meaning of play; it is an emprise which 
 no one lays upon us, and no one constrains, 
 which is devoid of sordid profit, and, perhaps for 
 this very reason, is pure joy all through. 
 
 Parsival was a strong lad. He revelled in the 
 sunshine, in the flowers of the forest, in the 
 birds, in climbing trees, in the oak apples, in 
 the wood-pigeons' nests, in the snow, in the 
 storm, not to forget the wild beasts, great and 
 small, which dwelt in the forest, and which, 
 from his ninth and tenth year onwards, he 
 began to hunt with craft and courage. Traffic 
 with nature after this fashion is like to make 
 your blood clean, your eye steady and far-seeing, 
 your bones firm and the muscles of your body 
 tough. Therefore it was as well that no rude 
 louts from the towns, who might have made 
 game of him, crossed his path, for he would 
 have man-handled them terribly.
 
 4 Parsival 
 
 It would not have been hard to make game of 
 him on several counts. Whether it had been of 
 his mother, Heartache's intent, or whether 
 circumstances had brought it about in her 
 despite, the boy knew nothing of God nor of the 
 Devil, and, if he had given the matter a thought 
 at all, he would have taken it for granted that 
 no human beings other than Heartache and 
 himself, lived in the world, and that, starting 
 from the log hut, the world would come to an 
 end a few bow-shots away in every direction. 
 But, as you know, this is not the case. The world 
 is exceeding wide-spread, and is peopled by a 
 multitude of folk, who are split up into nations, 
 each one of which speaks its own proper tongue, 
 and also differs from others in many ways. For 
 these, and other reasons, the lad Parsival might 
 have passed for a dunce, even among boys of 
 his own age, although his stupidness was, in 
 fact, only lack of experience. 
 
 He would, maybe, have taken a bearded man 
 that might have crossed his path, for a danger- 
 ous wild animal; he would have held a bishop 
 in his cope for something kin to a big strange
 
 Parsival 5 
 
 bird, but he would not have run away, but would 
 have attacked them, man and bishop alike, 
 fiercely, for his mother had taught him the use 
 of the bow and arrow, and had also given him a 
 hatchet, that might at need serve for a battle- 
 axe, to hang in his belt. Strangely enough, his 
 mother taught Parsival that all Nature was 
 their foe, and that you could only have and hold 
 the commonest things, if you took and kept 
 them by stress of arms. 
 
 The boy would, it is true, have had some such 
 feeling in his blood, even if his mother had not 
 taught it to him of intent. 
 
 Parsival, who could neither read nor write, 
 and to whose eyes a boundary stone in the forest 
 and, let us say, a book, would have been very 
 much the same thing, whom children learning 
 their A, B, C, in the lowest form would have 
 put to confusion, was broad of chest, had the 
 far-seeing eye of a bird of prey, and the delight 
 in battle and the courage of a lion. With it all 
 he was like a fox in the acuteness of his hearing 
 and keenness of his scent. Slipping through the 
 forest of nights, nothing escaped him. He knew
 
 6 Parsival 
 
 the meaning of every sound long before it would 
 have been within the range of the ordinary 
 human ear. A no less degree of fear kept pace 
 with his lusty courage, that fear which is com- 
 mon to the strongest wild animals and safeguards 
 them from being surprised, unawares and de- 
 fenceless, by a foe. So Parsival was ever ready 
 for the fray, and in the art of throwing his axe 
 or putting it to other account, and of sending 
 his arrow at a hundred paces or more to the pre- 
 cise mark he meant to hit, there was none to 
 match him; not even a real hero, let alone a boy 
 learning his A, B, C, in the lowest form of his 
 school.
 
 n 
 
 EARTACHE was by nature, and tak- 
 
 ing her all in all, a woman of the sort 
 that is sparing of words and keeps her 
 own counsel. Parsival had no more 
 seen her laugh than he had seen her weep. She 
 was never wont to display marked tenderness 
 towards the boy, but he could do nothing rash 
 without her eye watching and safeguarding him. 
 This is what happened when, hi his guilelessness, 
 he was about to pick up a thick, poisonous snake, 
 when he was on the point of jumping into the 
 flames of a forest fire, for, with their crackling 
 and spluttering, he took them for wild beasts, 
 licking their greedy jaws, and was about to fight 
 them with his axe. It would be no light matter 
 to record all the moments of danger when the 
 inexperience of a child put Parsival in jeopardy 
 and his mother guarded and saved his life. 
 
 One day, when a terrible storm was raging 
 through the forest, and, tearing them up by 
 
 7
 
 8 Parsival 
 
 the roots, was over-throwing many an old giant 
 of the woods in the clearing where Heartache's 
 log hut stood, Parsival had stayed out hunting 
 longer than was his wont. Amid the wild up- 
 heaval and the clash of tree-tops and tree trunks, 
 he had followed the course of a swollen mountain 
 torrent up-stream and had gained heights he 
 had not hitherto climbed, even with his mother's 
 goats. This time neither wolf nor elk nor bear 
 had drawn him on; it was rather the clouds 
 chasing across the sky, the moist, heady, raging 
 air, and, above all these, a general feeling of an 
 uncertain something that, like stirred and storm- 
 tossed Nature, was drawing him upwards and 
 onwards. The mountain torrent that rushed 
 foaming to meet him in headlong bounds and 
 with deafening din, the maddened air, that, 
 shrieking and howling, snapped the trees and 
 hurled them across the watercourse, seemed to 
 brave him to kindred unrestraint. Truth to 
 tell, a feeling of savagery took possession of 
 him, so that he shouted at the top of his voice, 
 and, in an access of strength, in very fact 
 set about uprooting trees. He snapped their
 
 Parsival g 
 
 stems, twisted them off and flung them into the 
 rushing water. Parsival was anything rather 
 than wantonly malignant, but forces that have 
 not had time to become creative, are often per- 
 force bound to find vent in destruction, and 
 furthermore, in the great divine scheme of crea- 
 tion, even destructive forces are creative. 
 
 When he had gained the highest peak of a 
 ridge of rock above the tree line, something 
 moved the boy, with an almost irresistible long- 
 ing, to go down into the unknown on the further 
 side, and he would, without a doubt, have pushed 
 on, and for the first time have spent the night 
 beyond his mother's roof, had not, of a sudden, 
 a cry out of the mist, stealing over the mountain 
 ridge, startled him and moved him to turn back 
 homewards. He had already turned his steps 
 back, when he quieted his fears with the explana- 
 tion that he had suffered himself to be tricked 
 by the cry of some solitary bird of prey. None 
 the less he had heard, quite clearly and dis- 
 tinctly, the word "Heartache" in the air. 
 
 When Parsival came home this time, his 
 mother's manner was strange. She said, it is
 
 io Parsival 
 
 true, never a word but the lad, glancing at her 
 askance with a puzzled sense of guilt, could not 
 help marking how drops of dew were brimming 
 'over the rims of her eyes and for a long time, 
 one after the other, flowed down and, in very 
 fact, bathed his mother's grave and hard face. 
 What was it? What did it mean? It was some- 
 thing new, something passing his understand- 
 ing. But it was further beyond his understand- 
 ing still when Parsival felt his own cheeks bathed 
 in tears and, touching his own eye with his 
 finger, became aware that it too had been turned 
 into a well of salty water. "Yesterday," some- 
 thing within him said, "you were still stone all 
 through: to-day you have been melted." 
 
 On the morrow Heartache said to Parsival, 
 "You know the herbs that are poisonous, and 
 you know the snakes. I have taught you to trap 
 the wild beasts of the forest in snares and gins 
 and to overcome them with the spear or with the 
 arrow. But all these foes are of no account; 
 there are men." 
 
 And for the first time Heartache now began 
 to tell her son how the races of mankind are
 
 Parsival n 
 
 spread over the surface of the earth, like the 
 sand of the seashore, and how neither the beasts 
 of the field nor the human race has any other 
 foe that is as terrible as man. The fight against 
 the beasts was, she said, child's play. The 
 cruelty of the brute was, as against the high 
 art of human cruelty, mercy. In the human 
 being, she said, dwelt many qualities far above 
 the brute: others, far lower than those of any 
 beast. So there was no brute, only human, 
 treachery. 
 
 In this fashion Heartache never ceased to 
 instill, drop by drop the poisonous and poisoned 
 matter, as it were, of an old hidden wound into 
 the child's pure soul. The conclusion of her 
 discourse was, "Stay with me: shun the world 
 of men."
 
 ra 
 
 ENCEFORWARD Heartache's son 
 could not go on spending his days, as 
 heretofore, in thoughtless happiness. 
 He had learned how a very great 
 multitude of folk, besides his mother and himself, 
 fashioned in their likeness, were in the world, 
 and how he must needs hold them for his worst 
 foes. And, had they not, in very truth, dealt 
 his mother that unhealed hurt of which he had 
 now for the first time become aware? What else 
 could have wrung those tears from his mother, 
 tears that had even melted his hardness, and in 
 a pang of pity, beyond his understanding, had 
 made his eyes overflow? When he pondered on 
 the misdeeds of men against his mother, and 
 of all the other things his mother had told him 
 concerning them, he felt a hatred against them 
 that at times rose to a mad lust for the destruc- 
 tion of all who bore the name of man, even of 
 himself among them. "Wherefor, if men be no 
 
 12
 
 Parsival 13 
 
 better, have they being at all, and wherefor am I, 
 who am nothing better than a man, alive? " 
 
 Once Parsival had tangled himself in such 
 thoughts as these, he longed for a weapon that 
 might prove apter to the hand and more terrible 
 than his axe for a weapon made to rush into 
 the world to better purpose and to avenge his 
 mother on men. 
 
 Spring, summer, autumn, winter now came 
 round again. Spring returned again and Parsival 
 did not cease to brood on his mother's hurt be- 
 yond all healing and on the race of men, whose 
 existence, for one cause or another, in part be- 
 cause of his hate, in part because of new, un- 
 known reasons, drew him more and more. The 
 craving to set forth among men grew in him 
 with irresistible and painful force, and neither 
 the song of the birds, nor his hunting and fishing, 
 availed to turn his thoughts from the hot long- 
 ing to cross the mountain ridge, beyond that 
 parting of the ways, where the bird of prey's cry 
 of "Heartache" had led him to turn back. The 
 poor lad could not put the thought away, al- 
 though it seemed to him quite impossible to
 
 14 Parsival 
 
 leave his ageing mother, whose sole friend and 
 guard he was, behind in the wilderness alone. 
 
 It was a very wholesome and natural force 
 that was drawing Parsival into the outside 
 world, and yet the boy felt conscious of guilt, and 
 doubly guilty at the sight of his mother. How 
 sorrowful was her look, a look that seemed to 
 probe him to the innermost recesses of his soul! 
 
 And now I have to tell of a marvel. 
 
 It is a strange happening, which, none the less, 
 is always being proved true anew: that every 
 man's hand must needs, in due season, find that 
 one particular weapon which is serviceable and 
 proper to it as none other can be. The marvel 
 that occurs in such cases, always is and remains 
 alike great, even if the manner whereby the 
 right hand is, at the right time, led to grasp the 
 right weapon, seems to us most natural and a 
 matter of course. 
 
 In the case of the lad Parsival, however, it 
 was, judged by its outward happening alone, 
 out of the ordinary and wonderful. He was 
 passing by just as, on the margin of a mountain 
 lake, a falcon struck a dove which fell to the
 
 Parsival 15 
 
 ground, ravelled up into a ball with the bird of 
 prey. After the boy's bow-string had shrilled 
 and a lucky shot had pierced the falcon's breast, 
 the archer marked that the dove was still alive. 
 It was lying on the ground beating its wings. 
 There is no gainsaying a hunter's trade is cruel, 
 yet, it can be said that the true hunter, though 
 he does, indeed, practise the art of killing, is, 
 apart from this, inclined to pity and by no means 
 cruel. Heartache's son drew near, intent to 
 put the bleeding dove out of its misery. But for 
 some reason or other he stayed his hand this 
 time from killing the little bird with a turn of 
 his wrist, and so its life was spared. "Live or 
 die," said the hunter aloud, picking up his 
 bleeding quarry and cradling it carefully in the 
 crook of his arm, "the issue lay with my arrow: 
 it has proved your saviour. I will not be more 
 cruel than my unfeeling tool." 
 
 "The issue lay with my arrow," was what 
 Parsival said, but deep within him a shudder 
 he could not understand shook him; it was as 
 if the true issue here had lain with some all- 
 present unseen Power, not with him or with his
 
 i6 Parsival 
 
 arrow. As if under some magic spell, he had per- 
 force to draw water from the low lying level of 
 the lake, for the dove, that drank it eagerly, 
 to bathe its hurts, and to refresh it by laving it 
 in the cool waters of the lake. 
 
 Having done this Parsival heard the call of a 
 wild dove from a little eyot, overgrown with 
 beech trees, where of himself he would have 
 guessed the nest, whence the stricken dove 
 would have come, to be. And straightway, as 
 if at the behest of a bidding beyond dispute, he 
 had plunged into the deep water up to his arm- 
 pits to reach the island, intent to restore the 
 dove to the nest of its forsaken, cooing mate. 
 He succeeded in making land, and, since he 
 was able to climb the tallest tree as easily as the 
 brown bear, the poor little bird, flooding a clutch 
 of speckled little eggs with her blood, was soon 
 restored to her downy nest. When Parsival had 
 climbed down from the branches of this thou- 
 sand year old beech tree, he found a sword. 
 A pigeon-blood ruby, gleaming in the depths of 
 the hollow trunk, led the boy to its discovery. 
 He snatched at it because he maybe took the
 
 Parsival 17 
 
 jewel for the eye of a woodland owl, but forth- 
 with became aware that it was inset into a 
 bronze hilt that ran out into a bare and broad 
 blade. Although he had hitherto never seen a 
 sword, as soon as he drew it clear in his hands, 
 he knew what it meant and what its purport was, 
 and also that, with this flashing trove in his 
 hand, there was now no further need to delay his 
 setting forth into the world.
 
 IV 
 
 N the morrow, when, as of wont and 
 use, Parsival awoke on his couch of 
 sweet-smelling moss in his mother's 
 log hut, and saw her busy at the 
 hearth, he sprang to his feet and told her that 
 he must needs avenge her on the world and on 
 the race of men. In her first dismay and in her 
 dread of losing him, she, after the manner of 
 many a mother, said something that served, as 
 nothing else could have, to fire his purpose 
 doubly into flame. He was, she said, unarmed 
 and unarmoured. Then the boy could forbear 
 no longer, though he had resolved to keep the 
 trove of the sword secret from his mother. With 
 pride and victory in his eye he drew the broad, 
 gleaming weapon from under the skins of his bed. 
 "I must needs leave you, Mother," he said, 
 "because I can know no peace as long as I have 
 not found out and punished the man who did 
 you the hurt that will not heal." 
 
 18
 
 Parsiml 19 
 
 Heartache made answer, weeping: 
 
 "That hurt was not to the death. If you for- 
 sake me, you will do me a far greater hurt which 
 will be unto death indeed. But if you should 
 fall in with, and punish the man at whose door 
 lie all the deepest sorrows of my lonely life, you 
 would, in lieu of one, be putting me to ten tor- 
 turing, long-drawn deaths." 
 
 But Parsival took up his sword, passed out 
 across the glade, set his teeth, and did not 
 turn back once when he heard his mother 
 weeping aloud and pitifully for him to come 
 back. 
 
 He roamed at a venture for several days. No 
 voice had called its warning "Heartache" on 
 the mountain ridge where he had turned back 
 the first time. Bravely and stoutly as he pressed 
 on, the world was unending, and he could not 
 forbear wondering why he did not come to the 
 edge of it. If, in his own despite, the thought of 
 his forsaken mother bade fair to constrain him 
 to turn back, he quieted heart and conscience by 
 telling himself over and over again that he needs 
 must avenge his mother on the race of men, and,
 
 2O Parswal 
 
 above all, on him that had done her so great 
 a wrong. By this time he had been three days 
 afoot, but in the meantime, save for his own re- 
 flection in the water, had not set eyes on any 
 human being. 
 
 Of a certainty, he thought, so soon as the first 
 of them chances to cross my path, we shall come 
 to blows forthwith. As he looked forward, de- 
 light of battle mingled with his hatred of his 
 kind. But it was not the thought of vengeance 
 alone, nor the delight of battle alone, but another 
 joy was astir in this hope of chancing upon men. 
 It was a delight that disquieted him, and made 
 him, as it were, flush red in spirit for shame of his 
 far-off mother. 
 
 On the late afternoon of the third day of his 
 wanderings, the lad had reached the edge of the 
 forest, and, far off on a flower-strewn meadow, 
 beheld a tent of fair purple silk. Seeing that he 
 had grown up, though in outward guise of great 
 strength and of gentle birth, with a country lad's 
 simple mind and that fear was a stranger to him, 
 he made not the least ado in passing within the 
 tent.
 
 Parsival 21 
 
 Here it was that he saw the first of the human 
 race. 
 
 Here, God wot, there was assuredly no work 
 for the sword in his hand, or for the thought of 
 vengeance for Heartache. For what met his 
 eyes was to blurt it out a fair, peaceful- 
 seeming maid. Parsival was at once aware that 
 he had to do, not with one of his own kind, but 
 with a much younger sister of his mother. There 
 was no room to doubt it, if only because the 
 young woman-thing was shedding floods of 
 Heartache's tears. The maid was dismayed at 
 the sight of the rough man of the woods, but 
 something in his look gave her confidence. She 
 did not know that once again, as once before 
 at the sight of his mother's tears, the soul of the 
 young adventurer had melted under her tears. 
 He gave her greeting and his first words were to 
 ask who was the man that had done her secret 
 hurt. Then she wept the more loudly, and amid 
 her sobs began to speak and Parsival listened to 
 her whole story. 
 
 She had, he heard, been carried off by a cruel 
 man, a robber Knight, although she had plighted
 
 22 Parsival 
 
 her troth to a young gallant, who had been not 
 her delight alone, but the joy of her old father 
 and mother to boot. The rude and hateful man, 
 who, in the h'sts of Knighthood, bore the name 
 of the Proud Knight of the Heath, was carrying 
 her away against her will and had brought every 
 attempt to set her free to nought. He had even 
 slain her betrothed in single combat. 
 
 "Where is this proud Lord of the Heath?" 
 asked Parsival, "for he is the very quarry I am 
 seeking above all other." 
 
 Not long afterwards the Proud Knight, on 
 his black charger, came sweeping over the 
 heath. He was in truth a terrible man, such as 
 Parsival had pictured him in his imagining. His 
 beard was black, it hung down to his middle and 
 was twisted into his sword belt. Under his black 
 eyebrows, flashed black eyes full of grim harsh- 
 ness and of proud disdain, that death alone 
 could quench. He reined in his horse, which 
 neighed loud, whereat helmet, spurs and chain 
 mail clashed and clanged again. When the 
 Proud Knight opened his lips, only these wrath- 
 ful words escaped the hedge of his strong
 
 Parsival 23 
 
 ivory teeth, "Peasant lout, what wouldst thou 
 here?" 
 
 "Just such a one as thou," quoth Parsival, 
 that he might avenge Heartache on him. And, 
 as if two lions in one, the lad leapt at the knight. 
 
 The fight was hot, but the victory at the last 
 fell to Parsival. The Proud Knight lay slain on 
 the edge of the forest. He lay dyeing the grass 
 and the daisies red in his ebbing blood. When 
 Parsival beheld the knight, hacked by his sword, 
 lying in his blood on this wise, a shudder shook 
 him for the work he had done. He told himself 
 that he had avenged Heartache. But he was 
 fain not to see the maid, whom he had freed 
 from her persecutor again. He therefore struck 
 back into the woods.
 
 OR a few days after his first emprise, 
 Parsival maybe roamed the woods, 
 until the longing to return home to 
 Heartache overcame him. 
 The spirit of the black dead knight lay upon 
 him like an overwhelming burden, and it seemed 
 to him as if only on his mother's breast, could he 
 shake it off. His delight in battle had passed, 
 his eager, headstrong craving for wayfaring had 
 flickered out in aimless wandering. But now, 
 after his resolve to take flight back to his mother's 
 heart had come to the sticking point, new life 
 poured in upon him. There he would win back 
 the old, guiltless, and careless days. 
 
 He was running as he had never run before. 
 It seemed to him as if he were only coming back 
 belated from his day's hunting. He had, maybe, 
 fallen asleep and had had a troublous dream, 
 but, at bottom, void of meaning. What his 
 mother had said came back to him now, "You 
 24
 
 Parsival 25 
 
 will, if you go, do me a far greater hurt than 
 that which the unknown man has dealt me." 
 
 "Mother," he had it in his mind to say, as 
 soon as, with merry greeting, he had passed into 
 the dear log hut again, "Mother, I have sinned 
 in going away from you. I shall stay with you 
 now and for ever." 
 
 Then his mother, he told himself, would stroke 
 his cheek and would smile away the dread lurk- 
 ing in the deepest depths of his being like some 
 evil blight, the dread fraught with the remem- 
 brance of what other things his mother had said 
 to him at their leave taking. These were her 
 words, "But if you were to fall in with and to 
 punish the man at whose door lie the deepest 
 sorrows of my lonely life, you would, in lieu 
 of one, be putting me to ten torturing long-drawn 
 deaths." 
 
 No! the Proud Knight of the Heath had of a 
 surety not been that man. 
 
 Parsival had crossed the border heights, and 
 had kissed the stones for joy where Heartache's 
 call from the air had before constrained him to 
 turn back. He raced joyously down the slopes
 
 26 Parsival 
 
 and foothills, with the bounds of a mountain 
 deer. Here every tree, every blade of grass, 
 every fern, every woodland flower, seemed to 
 him to be already thriving the better in his 
 mother's lap and under Heartache's loving hand. 
 He reached the lake, where hardly a week before 
 he had saved the dove from the hawk, and when 
 he climbed the tree in whose branches he had 
 found the wild dove's nest, he heard the twitter 
 of fledglings, and to his delight saw the parent 
 birds flitting safe and sound, round a nest full 
 of hungry nestlings. He took his sword and 
 lowered it back again deep into the hollow of 
 the tree. 
 
 After doing this, he felt of a sudden far more 
 light of heart. He knew that in a few hundred 
 paces, he would, in accord with his reckoning, 
 reach the log hut he henceforward was resolved 
 never to leave again. 
 
 Then of a sudden, he became aware of the 
 figure of a man, whom he could see through the 
 branches of the tree, from above, and who was 
 standing, in a boat, not far from the shore of 
 the lake, with rod and line.
 
 Parsival 27 
 
 Heartache's son had never, as we know, be- 
 held a human being in this spot. He did not 
 therefore trust his eyes, but climbed down the 
 branches of the tree to the ground and hailed 
 the strange fisherman with a shout. 
 
 The fisherman, without allowing himself to 
 be distracted from his pursuit, seemed to hold 
 Parsival for some strayed traveller, who had 
 lost his way, and wished to be set on the right 
 road. He, therefore, answering the hail with a 
 question, asked how Parsival chanced to be in 
 these parts and whither he wished to fare. 
 
 "Well-a-day, whither art thou faring? And 
 how comes it thou chancest in these parts?" 
 
 Parsival made answer. "As for me, thou 
 shouldst know that forest and lake and every- 
 thing round about belong to my mother, belong 
 to Heartache." 
 
 "The world belongs to Heartache," quoth the 
 fisherman, throwing his line out so that the lure 
 fell into water not very far away from the lad. 
 He said, a second time, "The world belongs to 
 Heartache, Parsival." 
 
 "How comes it that thou knowest me?"
 
 28 Parsival 
 
 "That I shall not tell," the fisherman made 
 answer. 
 
 "Hast caught many fish?" Parsival went on, 
 more for the sake of saying something because 
 he felt ill at ease in the man's strange company. 
 
 "I am in truth only waiting for one single fish, 
 and I long for nothing more earnestly than that 
 it should take my lure." 
 
 "Then go on waiting till thou turn black," said 
 Parsival, at the last, with a freshet of youthful 
 high spirits. "I cannot cut time to waste with 
 thee, for my mother awaits me." 
 
 He ran away and in a short time had reached 
 the glade where the log hut stood, but, none the 
 less, seen from some way off, it seemed to be in 
 some wise changed. His heart was beating wildly, 
 as, with halting footsteps, he drew near the old, 
 well-loved dwelling-place. What had befallen? 
 Parsival fell on his face and swooned away. 
 
 When he recovered his senses, he found the 
 fearsome spectacle, the sight of which had struck 
 him like a blow with a hammer, unchanged. 
 Heartache's hut, the cradle and shelter of his 
 young life, was gutted through and through by
 
 Parsival 29 
 
 fire. Even the black ashes had grown cold, and, 
 as he raked them over, showed no trace of heat. 
 Where was Heartache? Parsival made search 
 through the forest round about and called to her 
 at the top of his voice. 
 
 After he had sought his mother until nightfall, 
 but to no purpose, the strange fisherman, with 
 whom he had bandied words, came into his mind, 
 and the thought flashed through his brain that 
 the man might chance to be able to give him 
 word of his mother's whereabouts. Had he not, 
 albeit, in some spirit of mockery maybe, declared 
 that the whole world belonged to Heartache? 
 
 He reached the lake and to his joy, found the 
 fisherman fishing unconcerned, although the 
 evening was already drawing towards twilight, 
 and his boat had drifted rather far from the shore 
 towards the middle of the lake. At about this 
 hour, the mirror of the lake was quite black, 
 only in its depths the purple battlements of a 
 sunken castle seemed to glow like flame. 
 
 "Fisherman ahoy!" shouted Parsival. With- 
 out stroke of oar or turn of rudder, the boat, as 
 if of herself, began to drift towards the shore.
 
 30 Parsival 
 
 Parsival's voice demanded where Heartache 
 might be, and the fisherman, who even now kept 
 his eyes fixed on his line alone, made answer 
 somewhat after this fashion: 
 
 "Thou wilt have travail to find thy mother 
 again. I could tell thee many things of her and 
 of her lot in life, but my mouth is sealed, as long 
 as I have not caught the fish on which all turns. 
 Nevertheless follow, I bid thee, the shores of the 
 lake, and seek the place where the great river 
 flows in to it. Wend thy way up stream until 
 thou find a certain castle standing alone, knock 
 at the gate there and it is not beyond the bounds 
 of what may be that thou mayest have some 
 tidings of thy mother from its inmates." 
 
 In his grief and wrath at the tangled words, 
 Parsival almost had it in his mind to leap into 
 the fisherman's boat for to wrest his secret from 
 him by main force. His grief for his lost mother 
 knew no bounds, and he did not know how he 
 was to endure his longing and torment for her 
 and not die. But, quite of a sudden, darkness 
 fell and Parsival at the instant saw no more 
 of the fisherman and his boat.
 
 VI 
 
 E was now stumbling on blindly 
 through the darkness, because there 
 was nothing left him to do, if he 
 would still have word of his mother, 
 than to seek the castle of which the fisherman had 
 spoken. A bitter and a fearsome night it was that 
 he had to live through. He was astounded how 
 it could come to pass that a man such as he could 
 go under in such perplexity of distress. When, 
 the thick darkness made it, ever and anon, im- 
 possible for him to press on, he more times than 
 once swung from the terror of despair to fits of 
 Berserker wrath that spent themselves with 
 bleeding fists against stones and tree trunks. 
 
 He did not, be sure, cease to shout Heartache's 
 name over and over again into the rustling wil- 
 derness of the woods, whence, ever and again, a 
 mournful echo gave him answer, an echo that 
 only made his helplessness, his fears, his longing, 
 and in the end, his rage, the greater. He seemed, 
 31
 
 32 Parsival 
 
 in his own eyes, as one befooled, as one tricked. 
 They had tricked him of the most precious thing 
 the world had held for him, but where to look 
 for the trickster, for the cheat, he could not 
 tell. He went so far as to challenge the air, the 
 night, the trees, the rocks, the waters, and the 
 earth, to give him back his mother on pain of 
 his everlasting enmity. 
 
 Toward morning, Parsival became aware that 
 he was wending his way up stream on the banks 
 of a somewhat broad river. The grey dawn, 
 heralding the sun, disclosed a deep valley that, 
 steep and rocky, widened out or narrowed in 
 on either shore of the river bed. The farther he 
 fared the more foreign the landscape became, 
 and had he not been stricken to the soul, he 
 would, at the last, have believed himself in 
 Paradise. 
 
 Strange plants, strange flowers, trees and 
 grasses encompassed him round about. Great 
 cockatoos and other parrots flitted in smaller 
 or larger flocks, speaking with human tongues, 
 above the clear and green waters of the hurry- 
 ing river. They hovered above his head and
 
 Parswal 33 
 
 it seemed to him as though they were giving 
 him greeting. Once he thought he heard one 
 say: 
 
 "Boy Parsival, thy father awaiteth thee," 
 and he pondered within himself for a long time 
 what this saying might mean and what kind of 
 bird this "father" who, they said, was await- 
 ing him, might prove to be. But it was not only 
 the parrots that were tame in this river valley. 
 Stags with their hinds were lying at rest and 
 chewing the cud on its soft turf under holly 
 oaks of a thousand years growth. Snuffing 
 antelopes, creatures that, in their outward sem- 
 blance summed up all the graciousness, and all 
 the gentle nobility of peace, trotted up to the 
 wayfarer fearlessly, and nuzzled him with their 
 soft nostrils. Heather as high as a grown man 
 stood in snowy flower, and from groves of thick 
 laurel came the fluting of hidden songsters, 
 whose notes were of unearthly, liquid sweet- 
 ness. Over this dream-like, breathless pleas- 
 ance was of a sudden wafted the far off sound 
 of a bell, a sound that made every bird stay its 
 flight, or song and caused the antelopes, and the
 
 34 Parsival 
 
 deer, to stand still, even to pause in chewing the 
 cud. With necks outstretched they turned 
 towards a patch of flaming purple in the far 
 distance at the head of the valley, a spot whence 
 in the red dawn the river was now streaming 
 like a broad highway of crimson blood. Nor 
 could Parisval forbear to turn to the selfsame 
 quarter. Then he became aware that the ruby 
 light had its rise from the pinnacles of a proud 
 castle, which of a surety was none other than 
 the one he sought, and that to which the fisher- 
 man had sent him. 
 
 Then he heard unseen voices in the air, chant- 
 ing this chant-like song: 
 
 I dwell beside a broad, fair river, 
 
 I dwell within a lofty dome, 
 
 The broad, fair flood flows through the dome, 
 
 And ever broader grows the river, 
 
 And ever higher towers the dome, 
 
 Endless the stream flows through the dome. 
 
 I am afloat upon the river, 
 Wherein a second dome is mirrored. 
 I plunge deep down within the dome, 
 And rise on high above the river,
 
 Parsival 35 
 
 A-wing within the upper dome, 
 Music floods through the upper 
 
 upper dome. 
 
 Wave after wave comes from the river 
 And all's a-quiver in the dome, 
 And thrilling, echoing, through the dome 
 Thou know'st not, art thou but the river? 
 Art all that moves and stirs the dome? 
 Art at the last thyself the dome. 
 
 Not long afterwards the boy had gained the 
 gates of the mysterious castle, after crossing 
 to the threshold of the castle over a bridge of 
 clearest crystal that spanned the river which 
 was notably broad here and still flowed like a 
 stream of blood. He knocked at the gate and 
 was bidden welcome by a kindly warder with 
 a long white beard. At the sight of this new 
 human being and man, his mother's bitter judg- 
 ment concerning mankind came into his mind, 
 and he could not bring himself to answer the 
 old man's kindly questions touching his errand 
 other than with darkling wrath. 
 
 "Ye have done my mother hurt beyond all 
 healing," quoth he, "and, if, over and above,
 
 36 Parsival 
 
 ye have taken her away and hold her captive, 
 look well to yourselves, for I shall set her free 
 by force or put fire to your castle at all four 
 corners at once, as ye did to my mother's log 
 hut." 
 
 The warder was a man of lofty bearing. Save 
 that his kindly gravity was, as it were, deepened 
 by a certain air of friendly gentleness, you could 
 not have told that this headstrong utterance 
 had touched him. He only said, quite simply: 
 "In the name of the Holy Grail, enter." 
 
 "What is the Grail to me?" quoth Parsival. 
 
 "Ask God as to that," the warder made 
 answer. 
 
 "Who is God, old greybeard? I know not." 
 
 The venerable man, who bore a coat of silver 
 mail, plain to see, under his long, white cloak 
 and across it a sword in a broad gold belt, said, 
 as if in reproof, "Call me Gornemant." And 
 he went on solemnly: "What thou dost not 
 know concerning God, thou wilt never learn of 
 asking questions. So long as thou art speaking, 
 lad, God holds His peace, and only when thou 
 has learnt to hold thy peace in very deed, will
 
 Parsvoal 37 
 
 God speak. Go, the Lord of the Castle awaits 
 thee." 
 
 But Parsival was in no mind to be over-awed. 
 In the company of another knight, or whoever 
 else he might be, arrayed like the warder, he 
 passed up a broad, marble stairway, brawling 
 at the top of his voice. He would, he said, know 
 how to avenge his mother a hundredfold, if so 
 be they had done her a twofold wrong. But 
 his guide only crossed his hands on his breast 
 and bowed his head, in humble fashion before 
 him. By this demeanour Parsival was, in some 
 measure, put to confusion. Over and above, 
 came the sight of the many stairways, cham- 
 bers, halls, and casements of the castle, whose 
 whole fabric put him in mind of the work of 
 magic. He was led through crypts where many 
 twisted pillars of black marble mirrored the 
 light of a single blood-red lamp. Thereupon, 
 his guide said: "We are in the depths beneath 
 the river here." 
 
 He had to grope his way behind his guide 
 through narrow, unlit galleries, then round and 
 round in circles, and up and up, stair after stair,
 
 38 Parsival 
 
 as though winding round the trunk of a mighty 
 tree of stone. A postern gate stood open, and 
 he saw a vast dome overhead, high and broad, 
 and glistening with gold, the like of which the 
 poor lad had not even in his dreams beheld. 
 The whole building, wherein he himself was 
 only some antlike thing, seemed to breathe soft 
 melody. No wonder that the simple lad, Parsi- 
 val, was not straightway master of his senses, 
 and was for a while quite unmindful who he 
 was or what his errand in this place. 
 
 When he awoke from his bewilderment he was 
 alone. 
 
 But he was forthwith wholly given up to 
 listening, gazing, and marvelling anew. Was 
 it he himself that he felt, heard, and saw all 
 round about him? Was it in good sooth, only 
 his soul that was fulfilled with such visions as 
 these? Was it, this soul of his, the throbbing 
 dome that he bore within himself? Or was he 
 dead, and himself nothing other than a vibrating 
 breath lost in all these moving marvels? 
 
 For of a truth it was only in outer seeming 
 alone that all this was stable. It seemed rather
 
 Parsival 39 
 
 as if it were fashioned of some ethereal fabric. 
 Moreover this vast cathedral was, it seemed, 
 twofold, and dizziness overtook him as, gazing 
 down through the streaming mirror of the floor, 
 he beheld the second mighty dome reversed, 
 and like a bowl, deep as an abyss, beneath his 
 feet. 
 
 But amid all this swaying, quivering, and 
 throbbing, there came a voice wherein the car 
 "Heartache" was ever a-tremble, his Mother's 
 name, fraught with that mystery and meaning 
 that once before had led him to turn back. 
 
 And not unlike a man smitten with blind- 
 ness Parsival staggered on. Fleeting visions 
 encompassed him, swiftly fashioned, to vanish 
 as swiftly. Thus he thought to behold his mother 
 fashioned of some white substance, clad in 
 white raiment, with a white dead body of one 
 done to death, like the Knight of the Heath, 
 laid across her knees. 
 
 All this is witchcraft, thought Parsival, who 
 had stretched out his hands in the joyful agony 
 of recognition towards Heartache, whereupon it 
 all melted like some aerial cheat.
 
 4O Parsival 
 
 While he was brooding over this illusion, the 
 first of a rather long train passed like little ants 
 into the church through a side chapel, and Par- 
 sival marked its passage. His guide, who now 
 showed himself anew, told him that the Lord of 
 the Castle was of this train of old men and young. 
 Every one of them was wearing a white tunic 
 and the big red cross embroidered in needlework 
 on their breasts. With the entry of the train 
 the solemn inward music of the vast vault of 
 stone had swelled in volume. The guide speak- 
 ing said: "It is not meet for a stranger to address 
 the Lord of the Castle. Therefore prithee, 
 Parsival, wait until he bids thee speak." 
 
 The train drew nearer and with it one borne 
 upon a litter and arrayed in far more costly 
 fashion than the rest. Before them all, under a 
 silken baldaquin, was borne a marvellous crystal 
 vessel that seemed to glow of itself in a pure 
 and white radiance. They passed on, and it 
 seemed to the waiting lad as if not even one of 
 many men drawing near in the convoy paid 
 heed to him at all. 
 
 He grew discomfited, and his guide stayed his
 
 Parsival 41 
 
 unrest. At this moment they bore by a spear 
 bleeding at the point. The spear, borne by its 
 bearer at the slope, dripped from its mystic 
 source of blood, drop after drop of blood into 
 the glistening bowl. They had at the last borne 
 it up the steps of an altar, and set it down above 
 it as the holy of holies. 
 
 To the boy's eye these wondrous happenings 
 seemed, as indeed they were, a wonder passing 
 all understanding. Albeit, amid so many things 
 that passed understanding, it became in some 
 sort a riddle, whose reading was at that moment 
 of less concern to him. Grief for his mother was 
 eating him up. At sight of her counterfeit 
 fashioned of mist all the son's longing was 
 stirred anew, and the sight of so many folk and 
 men put him in mind of Heartache's bitter 
 words touching the whole race of men. He was 
 about to burst forth in rough words when 
 Gornemant bade him hold his peace, because, 
 so he said, the High Mass was about to begin. 
 
 "What may this portend?" thought Parsival. 
 
 But the question died in stubbornness and 
 grief, until the office filled even him with awe.
 
 42 Parsival 
 
 For that which now came to pass in this secret 
 mystic church was a fearsome mystery. A 
 piercing cry of pain, as of slow martyrdom and 
 murder, rent the building. It was as though 
 the bleeding spear were being slowly thrust 
 into the flesh of a living man, as though they 
 were filling the cup with blood gushing from 
 the side of a victim in torment. Parsival was 
 about to rush in rashly, for he thought he saw 
 that none other than the man on the litter was 
 being put to such dreadful torment. But Gorne- 
 mant held him back in a grip, quiet but strong, 
 that restrained the lad with numbing strength. 
 
 "I cannot cut my time to waste here," quoth 
 Parsival, still a-quiver with horror. "Your 
 secret church mislikes me. Ye practise things 
 here for which I would fain call ye to answer 
 sword in hand." 
 
 Gornemant asked: "Wouldst thou not learn 
 what this sacrifice of flesh and blood may im- 
 port?" 
 
 "No," said the boy, "I would in no wise 
 learn. Tell me rather where my mother is, and 
 who has turned her hut to ashes."
 
 Parsival 43 
 
 In the meantime the train passed back, but 
 without the sacred furniture, the crystal vessel, 
 and the bleeding spear. These, together with 
 the bloody cup, they had left on the high altar 
 under knightly guard. The Lord of the Castle, 
 who, strangely enough, was the pale man in 
 costly garments on the litter, bade them set 
 him down, and spake these words to the waiting 
 boy in a hollow, somewhat laboured, but steady 
 voice. 
 
 "Whoartthou?" 
 
 "I am Heartache's son," quoth Parsival. 
 
 "Who sent thee hither?" 
 
 "A fisherman whom I found fishing in Heart- 
 ache's lake," quoth Parsival. 
 
 "What was it for which the fisherman was 
 fishing?" 
 
 "His speech was folly. He said he had to 
 angle to catch the fish on which all turned be- 
 fore he were able to tell me aught touching my 
 mother," Parsival made answer stubbornly. 
 
 "Wherefore didst thou leave thy mother?" 
 
 The lad made answer: "Because I would fain 
 avenge her on the race of men, and above all
 
 44 Parsival 
 
 on one that did her a secret hurt beyond all 
 healing." 
 
 The Lord of the Castle asked and said: "Who, 
 prithee, is that?" 
 
 Parsival answering said: "I know not." 
 
 The Lord of the Castle, who was a man of 
 haggard mien, furrowed by pain, whose sunken 
 eyes shone like black diamonds, the Lord of the 
 Castle held his peace, so that he might still his 
 heart beating plain to hear, and his bosom gasp- 
 ing for breath. Then he went on: "Look me 
 in the eye, boy." 
 
 Parsival, with a fierce and forbidding glance, 
 did his command. 
 
 "Dost now know who I am?" 
 
 "Thou art mine enemy," quoth Parsival, 
 mindful of his mother's bitter words touching 
 the race of men. 
 
 "Behold," said the other hi answer, making 
 as if about to cast off the ermine of his kingly 
 robes, "behold I too am a man that travaileth 
 under a hurt beyond all healing. But seeing 
 that I too have done my brethren and my sisters 
 wrong, I have given myself to the service of the
 
 Parsival 45 
 
 Intercessor, and have committed all vengeance 
 into HJS hand. But on myself alone do I take 
 vengeance in as much as I am guilty and de- 
 serving to suffer. I have no enemy in the world." 
 
 "I marvel thereat," quoth Parsival. 
 
 Thereupon the Lord of the Castle: "Hast 
 thou till now done no man hurt? " 
 
 The boy was stricken dumb and could make 
 no answer. Then the train moved on and passed 
 from sight before Parsival, touched to the quick, 
 regained the mastery of his senses.
 
 VII 
 
 T was Gornemant and a troop of 
 younger horsemen that bore Parsival 
 company across the crystal bridge, 
 beyond the castle, and far into the 
 enchanted champaign. At one moment the 
 boy was humbled in spirit, at another violent, 
 and swayed to and fro from grief to wrath, be- 
 cause that he had neither found his mother, nor 
 had tidings of her. Many a time, as they drew 
 farther and farther away from the castle, he 
 looked back because some new feeling of heavi- 
 ness lay heavy on his soul, a feeling almost akin 
 to the sadness of farewell, hard as it was in his 
 plight to understand it. Old Gornemant seemed 
 to know it, although on setting forth the lad 
 had flung passing disdainful and angry words 
 about him. 
 
 'It cannot be otherwise," he declared gravely, 
 "I must needs bear thee company with my 
 fellow knights, as far as the boundaries of our 
 4 6
 
 Parsival 47 
 
 own domain. Thou art yet in banishment in a 
 world that is not ours." 
 
 "Thank God for that, old muttonhead," 
 quoth Parsival, laughing albeit with some- 
 thing of constraint. 
 
 "That is right. That likes me well," said 
 Gornemant. "Thou hast learnt to know me. 
 There is naught deserving of praise in a lamb 
 save that it is longsuffering. Grant me this 
 merit, and I am well content. In gratitude 
 therefor I shall now furnish thee with a little 
 keepsake which may perchance in time to come 
 prove not wholly without profit to thee on thy 
 wanderings." 
 
 This was the keepsake, or rather the admon- 
 ishment of Gornemant. 
 
 "Since thou hast left Heartache's care, Par- 
 sival, nothing has fallen out for thee as thou 
 wouldst have had it fall. Aforetimes thou hadst 
 eyes wherewith thou wert able to tell every- 
 thing afar off and near by. Thenceforward 
 thou has become as one little better than blind. 
 Withal thou hast not even made thy way far 
 into the stranger world. Thou didst deem that
 
 48 Parsival 
 
 grief for thy mother's secret hurt had kindled 
 thee to wrath, and moved thee to set out for an 
 avenger against the race of men, of whom thy 
 mother told thee that they were by far more 
 evil than wild beasts. Yet thy mother was 
 herself only human, but thou gavest it never a 
 thought. And therefore I give it thee to bear 
 in mind to-day. Thou boldest that that which 
 drove thee forth from the race of men was grief, 
 was, above all, hate. Learn that hate is Love's 
 twin brother, albeit, as cannot be gainsaid, ill- 
 favoured. And when thou didst set forth, Par- 
 sival, at the left hand thou hadst, it is true, the 
 ill-favoured twin brother plain to see by thy 
 side; but at thy right hand, holden for the time 
 from thine eyes, his twin sister, Love, as well." 
 
 "I would fain not confound thy callow young 
 head in greater confusion, Parsival. I would 
 only commend this twin sister to thee, even if 
 she be not, as yet, manifest to thy eyes. And 
 now let us speak of other matters." 
 
 The big, boorish scapegrace had hitherto 
 hearkened with strained attention. He gazed 
 about him, he beat the air, he was fain to believe
 
 Parsival 49 
 
 that, inasmuch as the old man were not making 
 a mock of him, he must needs touch the twin 
 brother and the twin sister, and behold them 
 with his eyes. "Let us see what more old grey- 
 beard will trot out," he then thought. 
 
 And Gornemant now went on : 
 
 "Ever since on that day of tempest that up- 
 rooted the trees in thy mother's forest, the 
 thought was in thy mind to be as unconstrained 
 as the whirlwind and the mountain torrent, 
 whirling its banks down upon its flood, thou 
 hast been entangled in a net of error and a life 
 full of riddles. Thou hadst thy first tidings 
 touching the world and the race of men from 
 thy mother. One veil of the lack of knowledge 
 has fallen. But now learn that the world and 
 mankind are a riddle enwrapt in countless veils 
 of myriad hues. Thou didst save a dove 
 by slaying a hawk. When thou spedst that 
 arrow, twin sister, Love, though thou knewest 
 it not, guided thy hand. She, too, it was that 
 lured and drew thee on, when thou didst place 
 the dove back beside her mate on the half 
 hatched eggs of her nest. So Love was thy
 
 5o Parsival 
 
 guide, and, is it not a wonderous thing, guided 
 by Love didst thou find the sword. It had a 
 ruby in its hilt, and it seemed to thee as if a 
 gleaming drop of blood from the wounded dove 
 had dropped upon it from above." 
 
 So this thing had indeed befallen, but by what 
 manner of means can he know all this, thought 
 Parsival within himself. 
 
 "Thou shall now learn what this sword por- 
 tends. Much guiltless blood cleaves to it. The 
 heroes that have wielded and misused it were at 
 the last led, guided of a surety, by the hand of 
 God, to put it away from them. They buried 
 it in the trunk of a hollow beech where thou, 
 too, didst find it, and where thou too, singled out 
 by the beck of God, hast hidden it once more. 
 Then thou didst run out hot foot into the world, 
 and earnest upon the little maid in her tent on 
 the edge of the wood." 
 
 ("Now I know who that was," thought Par- 
 sival within himself. "It was none other than 
 the twin sister, Love.") 
 
 "Thou didst then fall in with the knight whom 
 thou hast slain out of hand. Thou art no mur-
 
 Parsival 51 
 
 derer," he said, as the young man at his side 
 made as if to break in hotly; " 'tis true, ye fought. 
 Nevertheless that doth not hinder it that thou 
 hast laden a grievous and uneasy burden, that 
 thou hast taken blood-guiltiness, upon thy 
 shoulders. Not long hereafter brother twin, 
 Hate, held thee no longer thrall, and Love drew 
 thee unresisting homeward to thy mother's 
 hearth. But thou didst not find thy mother 
 again. The roof of thy youth had been torn 
 away, the refuge of thy youth was a blackened 
 heap of ashes." 
 
 "Aye, in very truth it was," Parsival now 
 cried with wrathful fervour. "And now that 
 I know the robber and the despoiler, woe be- 
 tide him! Heaven knoweth wherefore when I 
 beheld him the right thought did not come to 
 me. Wherefore else should the treacherous 
 fisherman have been stealing round about Heart- 
 ache's lake? But I shall draw forth my sword 
 where I have hidden it. I shall find the angler 
 again, and when I find him he shall, as did the 
 proud Lord of the Heath, water the green grass 
 with red blood!"
 
 52 Parsival 
 
 "Thou hast outstayed that moment," said 
 Gornemant. "The sick Lord of the Castle 
 whom thou hast seen, and the lonely fisher- 
 man on Heartache's lake, were one and the 
 same." 
 
 "Yet for a breathing space it shot through 
 my soul while I gazed upon him," cried 
 Parsival. 
 
 In the meantime Gornemant with the lad 
 had come to a pleasance shut in behind tall 
 hedges of roses. Their companions had has- 
 tened on before them, and had there set up a 
 tent of black gleaming silk with a cross of gold 
 above its ridge. "Here," said the old man, 
 "we have come to the boundary, and I believe 
 thou wilt, not without having given ear to me 
 to the last, fare forth stubborn and headstrong 
 into the stranger world of dangers and entangle- 
 ments." 
 
 As he spoke fair pages with bright curls bore, 
 the while strange music filled the air, a helmet, 
 a shield, and a coat of mail, on purple cushions 
 from out of the black tent. 
 
 "How comes it that my sword is hi your
 
 Parsival 53 
 
 hands?" cried Parsival, astounded, but old 
 Gornemant made answer: 
 
 "We shall show thee the falcon, the dove, and 
 the fisherman to boot." 
 
 Thereupon he took the casque, and showed 
 him a falcon of gold with an arrow through its 
 breast, a glorious imagery wherewith the ar- 
 mourer had adorned it. He took the shield, in 
 the middle of which a bleeding dove was plain 
 to see. The breastplate displayed the counter- 
 feit of an angler with rod and line in fair inlaid 
 workmanship. "These devices stand for Heart- 
 ache," said Gornemant, pointing with his finger 
 to certain curious designs done in rubies, and 
 traced as an oval framework round the picture 
 of the dove and shield. 
 
 "To what man doth all this belong?" asked 
 Parsival with eyes that shone with covetousness. 
 
 "Kneel thee down," Gornemant bade him, 
 without making answer. 
 
 Parsival only knew that he fell willy-nilly 
 on his knees. "Thou wilt wear these arms first, 
 Parsival, and then earn them. Fare forth into 
 the wide world, but first rehearse these words
 
 54 Parsival 
 
 after me, and imprint what I shall say on thy 
 memory." 
 
 He spoke in a clear loud voice, and the young 
 man on his knees rehearsed the words as plainly. 
 
 "Love your enemies. 
 
 "Bless them that curse you. 
 
 "Pray for them that persecute you and de- 
 spitefully use you." 
 
 "Pray for them that persecute you and de- 
 spitefully use you," repeated Parsival, in an 
 oddly unsteady voice; and on the same instant 
 Gornemant dealt him so shrewd a blow on the 
 cheek that he all but swooned, and then was 
 about to leap to his feet like a goaded lion. But 
 on the same instant he was aware how a red 
 banner with a Head crowned with thorns and 
 furrowed by pain was unfurled behind Gorne- 
 mant, and he heard words passing his under- 
 standing saying: "Tell us, Thou Christ, which 
 it was that smote Thee?" 
 
 After these happenings they put the helmet 
 on Parsival's head, buckled the armour about 
 him, girt a new sword about his thigh, and made 
 fast his shield on his left arm. Thereupon
 
 Parsival 55 
 
 Gornemant clapped his hands. They heard 
 the sound of heavy hoofs, and a strong, un- 
 broken horse, quivering but obedient, drew 
 near, trailing the hair of its thick, long mane 
 and tail on the ground. 
 
 Gornemant cried: "The war-horse is thine, 
 Sir Parsival," and straightway they bridled and 
 saddled the steed. 
 
 "Then truth, I stand not on the order of my 
 going," said Heartache's son, as he leapt lightly 
 into the saddle. Neighing loudly the charger 
 bore its rider thence.
 
 VIII 
 
 IRST at a gallop, then at an amble, 
 at the last at foot pace, Parsival 
 might well have put half a day's 
 journey behind him when he came 
 to a river and a ferryman's hut. The man saw 
 to it that the horse had provender, and seeing 
 that the evening was drawing in, proffered the 
 knight the shelter of his hut. 
 
 "You are mine enemy," said Parsival, "but it 
 would ill beseem me were I already unmindful 
 of the lesson 'Love your enemies/ that Gorne- 
 mant taught me but this very day." Therewith 
 he accepted the shelter and held out his hand to 
 the poor ragged boatman. 
 
 When the other had seated himself with his 
 guest at the meal of bread, a few thin slices of 
 bacon, and a sour wine, and the knight had laid 
 his costly pieces of armour on the blackened 
 wooden bench, he said: "What purports the 
 56
 
 Parsival 57 
 
 falcon with the arrow through its breast you 
 bear on your casque?" 
 
 "I do not know," said Parsival. 
 
 "What does the dove on your shield purport? 
 What of the fisherman on your breastplate? " 
 
 "You set me too many questions, old beaver," 
 quoth Parsival. "Methinks the future will in 
 due time make the purport of all these devices 
 plain to me. For the nonce, do not addle your 
 brain with them, and bide your time in patience 
 as I do." 
 
 But the fisherman was still wishful to know 
 what the word "Heartache" meant. 
 
 "So far as that is concerned, I know, alack! 
 more than I would lief know. Heartache is my 
 poor mother whom I have lost by mine own 
 fault, and for whom I must now make quest 
 up and down throughout all the world until 
 the end of my life." 
 
 That same night on his hard couch in the 
 ferryman's cot, Sir Parsival dreamed a dream. 
 
 The falcon of beaten gold on his helmet came 
 flying to his bedside, and said in a clear voice: 
 "Pluck the arrow from my breast, Parsival."
 
 58 Parsival 
 
 "No," quoth the sleeper, "for with beak and 
 claw hast thou done my mother bloody hurt." 
 
 The image of the dove then cast itself loose 
 from the shield, and came flying on to Parsival's 
 breast. The little dove said: "Pluck the arrow 
 from the golden falcon's breast, Sir Parsival." 
 
 To the sleeper's great amazement, the falcon 
 had now taken to itself the image of the sick 
 Lord of the Castle or of the Head crowned 
 with Thorns. For the third vision of this dis- 
 quiet slumber the fisherman on the breastplate 
 came to the new-made sleeping knight to re- 
 hearse the words in turn: "Pluck thou the arrow 
 from the golden falcon's breast, Sir Parsival." 
 
 "No," moaned the dreamer. "But tell me 
 now what manner of fisherman thou art? " 
 
 "A Fisher of Men," quoth the angler. 
 
 "And what is the fish that above all others 
 thou must needs catch?" asked the dreamer. 
 
 "It is thou," said the fisherman, "thou thy- 
 self art the fish, Sir Parsival." 
 
 On the morrow the ferryman took the young 
 knight in his glittering harness high on his 
 horse's back across the river in his broad wherry.
 
 Parsival 59 
 
 Before day broke, while the visions of his dream 
 together with all else that had befallen him, 
 were passing through his mind, he bethought 
 himself what significance it behoved him to give 
 them. Beyond all doubt the devices on his 
 arms were interwoven with his living fate in 
 time past and to come. Yet it was beyond his 
 cunning to unriddle them. Then of a sudden 
 the ferryman asked him, just as the boat was 
 touching the farther bank: "Sir Knight, what 
 law have you laid upon yourself? " And Parsival, 
 who was as quickly aware that a true knight is 
 subject not to the general laws of chivalry alone, 
 but must above all else lay stern laws of lofty 
 self-control, never to be broken, upon himself, 
 said, as gaining the shore, with a great bound 
 of his horse, he turned the mettled snorting 
 beast back towards the river, boat, and ferry- 
 man: "When there comes to your ears the re- 
 nown of a knight who puts these questions to 
 all and sundry of his peers on whom he chances: 
 'Whither hath Heartache been borne?' 'What 
 meaneth the dove on my shield, the falcon 
 pierced by an arrow on my crest, and the fisher-
 
 60 Parsival 
 
 man on my breastplate?' then bethink you 
 this was Parsival, Heartache's orphaned son. 
 But when Parsival is minded to fight with an 
 adversary without quarter, for life or death, he 
 will set upon him with the words: 'Die, for 
 thou knowest where the cruel bloodhound is 
 that did Heartache hurt.'" 
 
 At these words the war-horse at a touch of 
 the spur sped away. 
 
 After all these happenings years sped by, dur- 
 ing which time folk at many places and ends of 
 the earth had word of the strange knight who 
 bore the falcon pierced by an arrow on his helm, 
 the fisherman and the dove for his devices, and 
 overthrew every man who did not give answer 
 concerning them to the young warrior's content. 
 Many a knight of highest renown he had ridden 
 down with the cry: "Die, for thou knowest where 
 he is that did Heartache hurt," so that without 
 ruth they had to bite the grass, for that means 
 that those overthrown writhed on the ground, 
 and in their death agony did in very truth bite 
 earth and grass. What wonder that Parsival, 
 encompassed by dark report, was for the most
 
 Parsival 61 
 
 part hated, still more feared. He was, some 
 folk said, possessed of a stubborn black mad- 
 ness which some curse had laid upon him. 
 
 Amid the many adventures that befell the 
 mysterious and homeless knight, there came 
 at length one, one only, that put him in grave 
 jeopardy and did not let him issue scathless. 
 It was on the open plain, not very far from the 
 sea, in the stormy days of autumn rainfall, 
 that a knight on a white horse, wrapped in a 
 black cloak, displaying nothing save a golden 
 dove, crossed his path. 
 
 "Where is Heartache? What meaneth the 
 falcon pierced by an arrow on my crest, what the 
 dove, and what the fisherman? " Parsival asked, 
 as was his wont. But from behind the closed 
 visor only this answer reached him: "Inquire 
 from me rather of the Grail, Sir Parsival." But 
 on a sudden the other shouted: "Die, for thou 
 knowest where the bloodhound is that did my 
 mother hurt." And herewith the fight began 
 whose din folk could hear far off in the low lying 
 villages on the canal and lakes, but it did not 
 end with the death of the stranger knight, but
 
 62 Parsival 
 
 for first in the out-tiring of both champions. 
 "Give answer to my question," panted Par- 
 sival; and "Ask of me concerning the Grail," 
 the answer came again. A new onset, fiercer 
 than the first, locked the adversaries. Nor did 
 victory fall to Parsival this time, rather it looked 
 much as if the stranger masked knight out- 
 matched him in strength. One time or another 
 in this world every man finds his master. 
 
 And, in truth, at the third onset the cham- 
 pion with the golden dove, had, after a long 
 struggle, planted his knee on Parsival's chest. 
 
 "I should of rights strip ye of your dangerous 
 harness, Sir Parsival," he said. "But for the 
 nonce, I shall forbear, and shall set you free to 
 fare up and down the land for a season like a 
 bull consumed by silent wrath. Ye are still 
 something uncouth and rude for knighthood, 
 and meseems a hard and uncomfortable winter 
 reigns behind your brow. As ye are now de- 
 livered fenceless into my hands, Sir Parsival, 
 ye are, as ye well know bounden by the laws of 
 chivalry to do my bidding. I therefore lay this 
 behest upon you, first, for the space of a year,
 
 Parsival 63 
 
 to fight, neither for your own honour nor in 
 behalf of any king, neither in war nor in single 
 combat. During which term ye shall, in lieu 
 of asking others, commune with yourself what 
 the falcon, dove, and fisherman may portend, 
 r/here your mother dwells, and he that did her 
 hurt. Ye will furthermore commune with your- 
 self concerning the Grail, and seek, by peaceful 
 ways, to gain knowledge there anent what it 
 be, and also who your father is." 
 
 Discomfited, and almost eaten up by shame 
 for the lost honour of his arms, the vanquished 
 knight gave pledge in all these matters.
 
 JT was in very dolorous mood that 
 the knight rode in through the gates 
 of a great city. He had looped his 
 helmet on his arm, and his uncovered 
 head drooped forward on his breast as of a man 
 asleep. In answer to his weary summons, they 
 showed him the way to the inn nearest by. His 
 horse was fouled by dust, caked with mud, and 
 was bleeding from more wounds than one, but 
 the knight left it to the grooms of the hostelry 
 without paying it further heed, and withdrew 
 into the chamber allotted to him. 
 
 This city was under the rule of its Queen, 
 Blancheflour, a beauteous maiden. The report 
 of her beauty was far-spread, and had drawn 
 thither a multitude of wooers, among whom, 
 nevertheless, no man had crossed her path 
 whom she could love and make her spouse and 
 King. From her Castle, high above the city, 
 you looked down upon the sea and on the har- 
 64
 
 Parsival 65 
 
 hour, and on the heavy-laden ships of mer- 
 chandise that sailed in and out upon the flood 
 tide from every people and from every nation. 
 
 But none the less, and though she had a kindly 
 old kinswoman to bear her company, time 
 hung heavily on the maiden queen. Her people 
 had to see to it that she was enlivened by all 
 the news of the city day by day. She was in- 
 tent to have word of every stranger of mark, 
 and to have travellers of renown, or such as 
 were of high station, brought to her presence. 
 
 When she learnt of the coming of a wounded 
 young knight, who, with a countenance white 
 as chalk, had ridden dolorously into the city 
 on a black battered horse, and was lodging at 
 the "Sign of the Blue Wallet," she straightway 
 took note thereof. A knight with a grizzled 
 beard would maybe have kept her thoughts less 
 busy than a youth who was still all but un- 
 bearded. It was her pleasure to learn, and that 
 in full particular, what devices the knight bore. 
 
 Now they had given no close heed to that 
 matter. One of Blancheflour's serving men 
 meanwhile drew out of a varlet at the "Blue
 
 66 Parsival 
 
 Wallet," what it was her pleasure to learn, and 
 they brought her word concerning the helmet, 
 shield, and breastplate of the spent and wounded 
 knight. 
 
 Strange to relate she was thereat moved in 
 deep and joyful fashion, and would liefest have 
 straightway set forth to see the sick knight. 
 But he had, so they told her, barred his door, 
 and was to all seeming lying deep in sleep. 
 
 Then she bade them send physicians and wine 
 to the knight. On his awakening he was, she 
 gave order, to have food from the Royal kitchens 
 and to be tended with all care. 
 
 She slept very unrestfully that night. On 
 the morrow towards noon-day they led the 
 knight, whose face was still wan, into her pres- 
 ence. 
 
 Before that either had spoken a word, the 
 one to the other, Blancheflour was aware, as 
 was Parsival, that thenceforward their fates 
 were linked together for aye. Before the maid 
 had parted the red lips of her sweet mouth for 
 the first greetings she had given her heart to 
 Parsival, and Parsival, standing there in his
 
 Parsival 67 
 
 falcon helmet, and bowing himself low before 
 her, would fain, for the first time vanquished 
 through and through, have fallen at her feet for 
 her thrall and bondsman. 
 
 "Sir Knight," Blancheflour, with a light 
 quiver in her voice, now began, her worthy 
 kinswoman in her high white snood standing 
 behind her chair "Sir Knight, I have had 
 you summoned to our presence for a wholly 
 particular intent, and first of all give you our 
 thanks for your coming. They have told me, 
 and I now behold it with my own eyes, that 
 you bear a golden falcon pierced by an arrow 
 on your casque, the image of a fisherman on 
 your corselet, and a dove on your shield. All 
 these symbols, for a certain reason which I 
 shall make plain to you anon, touch me nearly. 
 If it be not irksome to you, Sir Knight, will ye 
 tell me who bestowed these arms on you?" 
 
 Parsival kissed the lady's hand. "Gorne- 
 mant," he said, "bestowed these arms on me." 
 
 The Queen held her peace. Her kinswoman, 
 in the high white snood, and the close black 
 cloth habit, meantime asked: "Sir Knight, saw
 
 68 Parsival 
 
 ye Gornemant?" When the other confirmed 
 it, she went on: "Then ye are the first after 
 five and twenty years have come and gone that 
 can give me tidings of the brother of the whilom 
 King, of the brother of my husband, who is 
 likewise dead, and of the lost Duke Gornemant." 
 She wept aloud, and Queen Blancheflour a 
 name that means as who should say Blackthorn 
 Blossom was at pains to comfort her in so far 
 that she in some measure regained the mastery 
 of herself. 
 
 "In truth, Sir Knight," quoth Blancheflour, 
 her eyes veiled in tears, "the King, my father, 
 the husband of my good kinswoman, and the 
 lost Duke Gornemant were three brothers in- 
 separable until, so the chronicles of our house 
 record, Gornemant set out for the Holy Land, 
 and has since then been missing. He, too, bore 
 on his arms the devices you now bear," and 
 she bade them bring what is called a missal 
 manuscript, a precious codex, on whose parch- 
 ment folios, fairly illumined in colours, Parsival's 
 armour, too, was piece for piece on record. 
 
 "Beyond all doubting," quoth he, "it was
 
 Parsival 69 
 
 your father's brother who endowed me with 
 his own armour and gave me the accolade. But 
 I hold that I was not worthy of these honours." 
 
 Both dames now offered lodging in one of 
 the wings of the Castle to Parsival, but he said: 
 "I am not worthy." 
 
 It was in some sort a confession, when, with 
 dull resignation, he set forth the reasons of his 
 refusing. This was the long and short of his 
 confession, to wit: that he had done honour 
 neither to his mother nor to Gornemant's arms, 
 that his hopeless darkling temper accorded ill 
 with the happy spirit of light, beauty, and love 
 in Blancheflour's realm. For the rest, he was 
 no longer of knightly degree, and had assuredly 
 been vanquished in fearful fashion. If his arms 
 were left him, they were left him for an act of 
 grace and under bond not to put them to use 
 for the space of a year. "That I am not worthy 
 of them, ye can learn from the words of the 
 knight who overthrew me not far from your 
 city. He bade me, in lieu of asking others con- 
 cerning the meaning of my device, to commune 
 with myself concerning them for the space of a
 
 70 Parswal 
 
 year, and furthermore he bade me commune 
 concerning another matter, concerning the 
 Grail." 
 
 Then said Blancheflour: "That ye shall in- 
 deed do, but not elsewhere than in the old 
 library of my Castle where the ancient scrips 
 concerning the Holy Grail, which moved my 
 Uncle Gornemant to set forth to the Holy Land, 
 are stored. He was wont to sit buried in parch- 
 ments, not for one year alone, but for many a 
 year, and of nights the watchmen on the towers 
 and in the streets of the city were wont to mark 
 the light in the casement above them where 
 this solitary man was making search into the 
 secret of the Grail." 
 
 "I am unlettered," said Parsival. 
 
 "By so much the better," quoth Blanche- 
 flour, "then I shall read them to you."
 
 HENCEFORWARD folk saw Sir Par- 
 sival on the high roads no more. His 
 black war-horse stood in Queen 
 Blancheflour's marechal, or was led 
 out for exercise in the riding school by royal 
 grooms. His armour was laid aside in the ar- 
 moury where it used to be stored in the days of 
 the lost Gornemant. 
 
 Parsival himself went forth in soft shoes, in 
 a green fur-edged surcoat, and had at most a 
 pruning knife in his belt. His fair hair fell over 
 his shoulders unbound. 
 
 In this guise folk oft-times saw him passing 
 through the Palace gardens, whose beauty was 
 of great renown in the world, if not as great as 
 that of the winsome Blackthorn Blossom, 
 Blancheflour, whose bower they were. But in 
 the course of that year whosoever had sight of 
 Parsival had no need to seek for Blancheflour, 
 for she was for the most part by his side. In 
 71
 
 72 Parsival 
 
 the realm, as indeed beyond its borders, folk 
 were already looking one fine day to see the 
 young knight raised to the degree of Prince 
 Consort. 
 
 Blancheflour became Parsival's teacher. His 
 rough demeanour became gentler. The in- 
 fluence of the noble and beauteous maiden 
 brought about the change his mother, Heart- 
 ache, had failed to achieve. The young warrior 
 knew no headstrongness towards her. At the 
 beginning she used to read to him in her tuneful 
 voice, until she had kindled his desire for learn- 
 ing, and he began to spell out words like a child 
 learning to read. She bade them bring writing 
 tools of gold, and then she guided the stalwart 
 hero's hand as if it were that of a backward little 
 boy. 
 
 All these studies commended themselves 
 greatly to Parsival, and he could not understand 
 how a schoolboy could ever harbour the thought 
 of playing truant. 
 
 Three months had hardly passed before the 
 knight could read and write a little, could play 
 the lute and sing one or two tuneful little songs.
 
 Parsival 73 
 
 But Blancheflour had taught him other and 
 more beautiful things, among which merry and 
 heart-whole laughter, hitherto wholly unknown 
 to him, but wherein he now proved himself 
 adept, was not the least. In truth, among her 
 gifts were others yet more precious. Her pres- 
 ence always had the power to turn night into 
 day, and day into holiday for Parsival. But 
 all these things did not exhaust the fulness of 
 the wondrous power she wielded over the man 
 who had fallen victim to numb sorrow at his 
 mother's loss, into error and into sullen wrath, 
 who had even failed to turn all that had befallen 
 him in the mystic castle to his enlightenment. 
 For Blancheflour, in this regard a nursing sister, 
 had the power of healing the seared places 
 where the mother's painful lessons of hate had 
 eaten their way into his flesh. In truth, she 
 set up her own winsome presence in the place 
 of his memory of his mother, and therewith his 
 grief for her loss and her wrong in Parsival's 
 soul. 
 
 He used to bear her company to the Cathedral, 
 and mark her devoutness when amid bowed
 
 74 Parsival 
 
 heads and bended knees Holy Mass was being 
 sung to music. By virtue of her teaching the 
 whole office was by slow degrees, though, of 
 course, only as a wonder passing all under- 
 standing, made plain to him. After some time 
 he was held to be well-instructed enough to par- 
 take the Body of the Lord. 
 
 In the old library of the Palace was a parch- 
 ment that gave some inkling touching the falcon 
 pierced by an arrow, the dove and the fisher- 
 man. It disclosed certain mysteries that were 
 as new to Blancheflour as to Parsival, wherefore 
 they were wont to bend their heads, cheek 
 touching cheek, over the scrip together. Oft- 
 times they were in no wise grave, and lost sight 
 of the letters amid the tears of their laughter, 
 and in the tangle of his curls and hers that 
 mingled over the book. 
 
 In converse with Blancheflour, it was not 
 long before the knight could not longer blind 
 himself to the fact that every man, whatever 
 his nature, has a father. The thought that he, 
 too, had a man for a father made him first joyful 
 and then disquiet. He then asked himself why
 
 Parsival 75 
 
 his mother had never told him of his father, his 
 mother who must have known him, as Blanche- 
 flour knew him, Parsival. His thoughts on this 
 matter were full of reproach. He held that 
 Heartache had no right to keep the name, sta- 
 tion, and abode of his father, and in short the 
 whole of his father, from him. It was Blanche- 
 flour who in this matter, too, tempered his always 
 somewhat headstrong judgment. She told him 
 of people in whose instance wedlock, which in its 
 beginning was idle joyousness and bliss, closed 
 in misery. But this brought Parsival into 
 jeopardy of slipping back into his old slough of 
 despond. 
 
 For he had chanced to hit upon the thought 
 that it might mayhap be his own father that 
 had done Heartache the hurt beyond all healing. 
 Wrestling with this thought, he used to with- 
 draw himself for days and not come forth into 
 the open air. Smitten with how deep a blind- 
 ness, had he not made quest for his father as 
 after an arch enemy, his father whom he now 
 would have met with very other feelings. What 
 an infinitely merciful providence had safe-
 
 76 Parsival 
 
 guarded him from becoming his own father's 
 murderer. 
 
 In this train of thought the sable knight of 
 the golden dove, who had thrown himself like 
 an iron barrier athwart his path, and, when he 
 had flung himself against it, had overthrown 
 him, came back to Parsival's remembrance. 
 Wherefore had the stranger even after victory, 
 not raised his visor, wherefore had he sought 
 him, of all men, out, and who might he be? It 
 was not thinkable that a sick and wounded man 
 should put forth such strength. With this as- 
 surance Parsival kept a thought that was ever 
 ready to assail him afresh at bay; it was that not 
 the fisherman on Heartache's lake and the sick 
 Lord of the Castle alone, but the sable knight 
 with the golden dove as well, were one and the 
 same. Be it as it might, he was now resolved 
 to beseech Queen Blancheflour to essay with 
 him the study of the Grail and of its purport. 
 
 This he did, and the Queen led him into the 
 library which was a very roomy and ancient 
 vault. Many precious codices, guarded by 
 scholars, were stored there. A venerable old
 
 Parsival 77 
 
 man with a white beard, bowed low before the 
 Queen and led the two into a separate chamber, 
 not unlike to a chapel, that was dimly lit by 
 curious hanging lamps such as you may see in 
 mosques. Here an aged worthy Arab in a green 
 turban with a long white beard, rose to his feet 
 from a green table, lit to that end by a read- 
 ing lamp, where he had unrolled an ancient 
 Arabic scroll. The ample white robes of a 
 Bedouin enfolded him like a cloud. 
 
 Parsival had really well nigh fallen into the 
 error of taking the old Arab for the Almighty, 
 concerning whom he had of late learnt so many 
 mystic and wondrous things. But before he 
 had betrayed himself by some ill-considered 
 question, the bookman told him that he was 
 an Arab searcher and sage, who for more than 
 seventy years had searched all the parchments 
 stored there for the deepest secret of the Grail, 
 a secret he was striving to bring into accord 
 with the Bible of the Mohammedans, the sacred 
 Koran. 
 
 Both Blancheflour's and ParsivaPs courage 
 sank when he showed them the endless shelves
 
 78 Parsival 
 
 of books, all the tomes of which were concerned 
 with the Holy Grail. To be master of them you 
 would have assuredly wanted several hundred 
 years, even if you had given day and night 
 wholly and solely to their study. But Blanche- 
 flour, after her wont in such matters, forthwith 
 called upon the learned bookman to deliver a 
 short discourse on the matters of greatest im- 
 port in the myth of the Grail. The Arab had 
 bowed his head over his parchments again when 
 the bookman began.
 
 XI 
 
 HE bookman's discourse: 
 
 "When Our Lord Jesus Christ was 
 nailed to the cross by His own 
 people at Jerusalem, a fearful deed 
 that has fallen to the lot of very many bearers 
 of salvation at the hands of their own people, 
 a rich and worthy man, Joseph of Arimathea, 
 bade them, after some interval of time, take 
 the body down from the dishonourable gallows, 
 and lay it to rest in a family sepulchre he him- 
 self had made ready in his garden. For this 
 deed he was thrown into prison, and some have 
 averred that he lived forgotten for forty years, 
 in prison without food or drink." 
 
 "And without the light of day," said the Arab. 
 
 "Even so," repeated the bookman, somewhat 
 angered, "without the light of day to boot." 
 
 "Vindicta salvatoris," quoth the Arab, but 
 without heeding him the bookman went on 
 with his discourse. 
 
 79
 
 8o Parsival 
 
 "During the forty years of his imprisonment 
 Joseph of Arimathea's life was preserved by 
 heavenly meat and heavenly drink. After His 
 Resurrection, Jesus Christ, the Saviour, Him- 
 self brought a gleaming dish of crystal into his 
 barred and bolted cell, a vessel in which neither 
 meat nor drink ever failed. This vessel is called 
 the Grail. Folk have debated whence this vessel 
 came. What alone is certain is that at the hands 
 of the Saviour, it came to do wondrous works, 
 and was bestowed for a gift on Joseph of Ari- 
 mathea. Some say the Saviour's sacred Blood 
 was caught in this vessel when they took the 
 Body from the cross." 
 
 The Arab said: "It was none other than the 
 paten whereon at the Last Supper that Jesus 
 took with His disciples the Paschal lamb, the 
 blessed Paschal meat, was laid." 
 
 "Thereupon I am about to touch," said the 
 bookman. "My thesis, the ductus of my dis- 
 course ..." 
 
 "I lean in general to the view," said the Arab, 
 " that the Grail was the cup of the Last Supper, 
 and by no means the dish."
 
 Parsival 81 
 
 "Be that as it may," the bookman went on, 
 talking the Arab down, "Whether cup or platter, 
 it hath, it may be, seemed good to God's al- 
 mighty power to turn the twain into one. How- 
 ever it may be, most illustrious Queen Blanche- 
 flour and noble Sir Knight, in the Holy Mass 
 they celebrate in the cathedral and in the Chapel 
 Royal, we have an afterglow of the miracle that 
 was wrought on Joseph of Arimathea during his 
 imprisonment." 
 
 "But afterglow only," said the Arab. 
 
 "I shall," quoth the bookman, "deliver my 
 discourse better digested at a more convenient 
 season, most illustrious Queen. If Mass and 
 Grail do indeed differ, the paten nevertheless 
 whereon 'the Body of the Lord' is distributed, 
 has at times and seasons wrought not less won- 
 drous works. The Grail, 'tis true, hath re- 
 mained a secret. Joseph of Arimathea brought 
 the miraculous vessel with him from Jersualem 
 into northern lands, whither, on his release from 
 captivity, he fared forth from Palestine. But no 
 mortal man knows for certain what has befallen 
 the vessel."
 
 82 Parsival 
 
 "I shall soon have knowledge thereof," said 
 the Arab. "The astronomers have foretold 
 an age of one hundred and fifteen years for me, 
 and I need at the utmost ten to finish my studies. 
 Even then I should be only a hundred and one 
 years old, and I should then, three and twenty 
 years before my death, be so far forward as to 
 find the way to the companionship of the Grail 
 and to the Castle of the Grail blindfold." 
 
 "What is the companionship of the Grail?" 
 asked Parsival. 
 
 "Joseph of Arimathea founded it," said the 
 Arab. "Eleven companions of the Grail con- 
 stitute it. The place of Joseph of Arimathea is 
 already being held by his twenty and first suc- 
 cessor. The name of the Presbyter or Grail King 
 of this present day is, as I have now ascertained 
 for certain, Amfortas. At the Round Table, 
 as the order of the service of the Grail, instituted 
 by the prophet Jesus Himself ordains, the seat 
 at the King's right hand is left empty. For 
 eleven hundred years they have been awaiting 
 the Prophet's coming again." 
 
 "Of the Christian Saviour," said the book-
 
 Parsival 83 
 
 man. "Blind pagans at best have traffic with 
 Allah and his prophet." 
 
 "I see more things than thou," said the Arab, 
 and therewith he gazed long and searchingly at 
 Parsival's high and white brow. 
 
 "Forgive me, wise man," said the bookman, 
 "if your last utterance did not wholly prevail 
 to set my doubts at rest." 
 
 But the Arab, without turning his eyes from 
 Parsival, made an end of speaking in somewhat 
 solemn fashion. 
 
 "Heartache lives in the King's heart. The 
 Keeper of the Grail is wounded, is sick. Am- 
 fortas awaits his son. Come-who-may-come 
 will find him." 
 
 The significance of these words escaped 
 Blancheflour in some measure. All the deeper 
 the mark they left on Parsival. As she took 
 her leave the young Queen said: "You should 
 have asked Gornemant concerning the Grail, 
 his ancestry, and his present abode. The news 
 the bookworms have given us leaves me ill 
 content." 
 
 Quoth the Knight: "If you will lend me your
 
 84 Parsival 
 
 ear for the space of an hour I shall make you 
 better instructed. The debate between the book- 
 man and the Arab, and in particular the latter's 
 last words, have in the twinkling of an eye dis- 
 closed the errors and misdeeds of my past life, 
 what I have lost and what I have held. Behold, 
 Blancheflour, the Grail was, as it were, laid by 
 my cradle, and I did not know it, nor did I know 
 how to be worthy of it. The scales have now 
 fallen from my eyes."
 
 XII 
 
 T was Blancheflour's wish to wed 
 Parsival, and it therefore irked her 
 to mark how the spirit of inward dis- 
 quiet, the spirit of unrest, regained 
 its dominion over him. She could not forbear 
 fearing lest he should set forth before the wed- 
 ding, so as to make atonement, as he said, for 
 all he had left undone, and to purge himself of 
 all the errors that oppressed him 
 
 He had told his mistress of the castle of the 
 Grail where he declared he had been. He had 
 spoken of Gornemant as a paladin of the Grail. 
 He had told her much of the piercing cry of pain 
 the Grail King had uttered during the bloody 
 office of the Mass, the remembrance of which 
 served not least to darken and confound his 
 counsel. Oft of nights, he said, he had heard 
 this cry in his dreams, and had thereby been, 
 as it were, driven forth restlessly up and down 
 the world. Every man, he held, bears his pain 
 8s
 
 86 Parsival 
 
 as long as he needs must, and man alone can 
 set free his fellow man. 
 
 "It is not well," quoth the Dame of the White 
 Snood to Blancheflour, "that Parsival should 
 tangle himself in these fantasies of the Grail. 
 It is as it befell Gornemant aforetime. In like 
 manner his spirit, too, began to play the will o' 
 the wisp. Then he fared forth, and has not 
 come back. It may, I know, be," she went on, 
 "that he is perchance yet alive, and has, maybe, 
 in truth, given your Parsival the accolade 
 somewhere down yonder in the land of the 
 Turks. But it may also be that he has but taken 
 these arms from some wight or other that 
 stripped Gornemant of them, and bore them 
 together with his stolen name. The more I 
 ponder the matter the harder does it become to 
 believe the story Parsival has told us of his 
 accolade by Gornemant. The simple fellow is 
 labouring under the fantasy of his own con- 
 ceits. Gornemant for sure died long ago, bat- 
 tling for the Holy Sepulchre." 
 
 As far as that Blancheflour's doubts did not, 
 it is true, carry her. None the less she feared
 
 Parsival 87 
 
 for Parsival's reason when he told her in all 
 seriousness that Amfortas, the Keeper and King 
 of the Grail, was, as he was now well assured, 
 his bodily father. 
 
 In long debates he set forth to her by what 
 path he had come to this assurance. "My 
 mother, Heartache's spirit, prevailed to safe- 
 guard me so long as it encompassed me. Be- 
 yond these limits it availed nothing for my weal. 
 I beheld my father for the first time after I 
 had restored a wounded dove to its nest. Its 
 pursuer, a falcon, lay pierced by an arrow at 
 my feet, but my father, who at that moment 
 put on the likeness of a fisherman, was busy 
 angling in Heartache's lake. I am the fish he 
 then would fain have caught. 
 
 "I saw my father for the second time and for 
 the third time shortly before and shortly after 
 I had found my mother's cot a heap of ashes, 
 and had lost Heartache for ever. Once again 
 he seemed to be nothing more than a common 
 fisherman, but he had only doffed the ensigns 
 of his high office, for he is, and at that time 
 already was, King of the Grail. He set my feet
 
 88 ParsM 
 
 on the road to the refuge of the Holy Castle 
 Montsalvas. 
 
 "I beheld the Castle and beheld the Grail, 
 and ringing in my ears, I still hear the words, 
 my father, as King of the Grail, asked me, and 
 the answer I made thereto. 'Dost know me?' 
 asked he, and I thereon, 'Aye, thou art mine 
 enemy.' Then did I cast away the Grail, my 
 father, and Heartache. 
 
 "Having been given the accolade by Gorne- 
 mant, I dreamed this dream in the ferryman's 
 hut. The falcon in my casque came flying to 
 my bed, and said 'Pluck the arrow from my 
 breast, Parsival.' The dove on my shield set 
 herself free. She fluttered fearfully above my 
 head, and said 'Pluck the arrow from the golden 
 falcon's breast.' 'Thou should'st pluck the 
 arrow from the falcon's breast,' said the fisher- 
 man, and likewise drew near my bed. 'What 
 manner of fisherman art thou?' I asked. 'A 
 fisher of men,' he made answer, 'but of the 
 whole race of men thou art the catch that above 
 all others I must bring to land.' I saw my 
 father again for the last time, sweet Queen
 
 Parsival 89 
 
 Blancheflour, before I came to you a beaten 
 and a vanquished man. None other than he was 
 the Sable Knight and my master in the fray. 
 He wrought his best and his last for his froward 
 son by a first well-judged terrible chastening. 
 By grace thereof I was brought to you, and in 
 your sweet presence the wild beast of the forest 
 first grew into a human being worthy of the 
 name of man. I now know, for the first time, 
 how every fight that would be worthy must be 
 fought in the cause of peace alone." 
 
 Poor sweet Blackthorn Blossom could make 
 naught of all this tangled skein. She was fain 
 to wed him, fain to make him King, and she 
 would fain be the one keeper and inmate of 
 his soul. "Set me free, set free your poor 
 Blancheflour that loves you with every fiber of 
 her heart," she cried. Then he told her of his 
 resolve to go in quest of the King of the Grail 
 and to release him from his pain. He would have, 
 he said, no peace either by day or night until the 
 arrow were plucked from the golden falcon's 
 breast. 
 
 Meantime at Blancheflour's instance, all
 
 po Parsival 
 
 things were made ready in haste for the wedding 
 feast, and she prevailed upon Parsival to agree 
 to their marriage. The knight thenceforward 
 seemed to be content with his lot, and the Grail, 
 as well as all that turned thereon, was put behind 
 the joy of the passing day. At length all things 
 were made ready, and amid the pealing of bells 
 and the rejoicings of the people, Blancheflour, 
 crowned with myrtle, was led at the side of the 
 fairest man to the church and altar where they 
 plighted their troth, and the priest blessed their 
 wedlock. 
 
 On the evening of the feast day the blissful 
 pair had gone to rest together. On the morrow 
 Blancheflour awoke and found her husband's 
 place empty. They made search for Parsival, 
 but the day passed, and day after day passed 
 by, and no man was able to find him. The 
 Queen fell sick unto death, and when she was 
 made whole again, and new strength was re- 
 turned to her, it seemed as though she had 
 grown older by ten years. 
 
 Folk hardly knew her again, so pale and hag- 
 gard did she look in her black widow's weeds.
 
 xni 
 
 O Sir Parsival had stolen away by 
 stealth. 
 
 Before break of day he had sad- 
 dled his mettled black stallion with 
 his own hand, had donned his arms and other 
 harness, and had ridden forth into the night. 
 
 In the cathedral, amid the plighting of his 
 troth, his ears had rung with quite other melodies 
 from the far-off secret church, and during the 
 wedding feast, amid all the carousings and re- 
 joicings, he had in spirit of a sudden beheld the 
 banner with the Crown of Thorns and had heard 
 Amfortas's cry of pain. 
 
 But when darkness fell, and the halls and 
 chambers of the Castle were ablaze with lights, 
 a lamentable wind sprang up round about the 
 house, and borne on its breath Sir Parsival never 
 ceased to hear the word "Heartache," "Heart- 
 ache." 
 
 Then Parsival said within himself: "So long 
 91
 
 92 Parsival 
 
 as I have left my mother's cry and my father's 
 anguish unstilled, there can be no happiness for 
 me," and therefore, deep as it cut him to the 
 soul, he must needs forsake his young wife. He 
 had now for many a long day been wandering 
 to and fro up and down the world, but he had 
 never for a moment doubted that he would 
 find the way to the Castle of the Grail again, 
 for did it not lie not very far away from the 
 spot where Heartache's cot had stood? But 
 even to find this country again was, as the issue 
 soon showed, none too light a task. 
 
 In the end he did indeed find this heap of 
 ashes without being wholly aware how long he 
 had spent on the journey. As he beheld the 
 place of the sad ruins again, Parsival wept. He 
 wept long ere he set out on the quest anew. He 
 soon came to Heartache's lake, but thence- 
 forward everything seemed to mock the happen- 
 ings of the past that stuck so closely in his re- 
 membrance. 
 
 He had hoped within himself to fall in here 
 with his father in the guise of a fisherman, but 
 far as the eye could range over the black, un-
 
 Parsival 93 
 
 moved face of the water, there was no human 
 being in sight. Only here and there fish were 
 leaping above the surface, and seemed, undis- 
 turbed by beavers or fish-eating birds, unscared 
 by human beings, to have multiplied in the 
 meantime a thousand fold. For days and days 
 Parsival rode along the shore, without reaching 
 the end of the lake, and without finding the place 
 where the river ran into it. Over and over 
 again did he ponder the matter, and rehearsed 
 most closely to himself how everything had 
 befallen when on that night of despair he had, 
 at the fisherman's bidding, not failed to find 
 the way to the Castle, and over and over again, 
 as he looked out on the country now wholly 
 foreign to him, he grew distraught and saddened 
 to hopelessness. 
 
 In some such season as this a strange thing 
 befell him. The shores of the lake at the spot 
 where he chanced to be drew somewhat nearer 
 together. Then, on the further shore of the lake, 
 he became aware, or thought he was aware, of 
 a woman with unbraided hair in beggar's rags, 
 who, so it seemed to him, was beckoning to him
 
 94 Parsival 
 
 feverishly. She called out, and although her 
 voice could not carry to Parsival's ear, the 
 young man who was now beckoning in answer 
 to her, shouted back as loud as he could. Then 
 she pointed to a spot on the shores of the lake 
 which Parsival, so he understood it, was to 
 make so as to fall in with her. A little shudder 
 shook him. None the less he turned his horse 
 thither. When he had ridden a long way at a 
 fast pace and looked up, he had lost sight of the 
 woman on the other bank. 
 
 The self-same thing happened again after the 
 knight, errant in good truth, had come to the 
 very spot where the ragged, beckoning woman 
 had first shown herself. She was now standing 
 on the other shore, and was beckoning and 
 calling from the place where he had been before 
 he first caught sight of his strange quarry. He 
 pricked his ears and listened with strained in- 
 tentness to catch the faintest sound of her voice 
 across the breadth of the silent lake, and in very 
 deed, so it seemed to him his blood froze round 
 his heart the word "Heartache" was borne 
 long-drawn across the water. "Here am I,"
 
 Parsival 95 
 
 he shouted back. "I am Parsival," and the 
 woods gave back his voice. Thereupon the 
 chase began afresh, and its upshot was that, 
 believing he was riding towards the stranger, 
 he again found himself alone in the spot whence 
 he had first set out. 
 
 When Parsival had resolved to make an end 
 of this strange and disquieting chase, he did 
 not know for certain how long it had lasted. 
 He now gave up all hope of ever learning whether 
 the whole matter were a phantasm, or what 
 meaning was hidden behind the phantasm. It 
 now seemed to him as if he had wholly lost the 
 road towards the Castle of the Grail, and that 
 he had to set forth on one wholly in the oppo- 
 site direction. Before long he was back in the 
 world of his fellow men, but among a people 
 whose tongue he could not understand, whence 
 it became clear to him that he had again ridden 
 at misadventure. He struck into the forest 
 afresh, and there on the third or fourth day of 
 his wayfaring fell in with a hermit. 
 
 Moved by the frankness of sore distress, he 
 asked the hermit, who entreated him hospi-
 
 96 Parsival 
 
 tably to his simple fare, whether he could not 
 set his feet on the right road to the Castle of 
 the Grail and to the Holy Sepulchre itself. But 
 the old man only shook his head. Parsival, 
 meantime, went on after the manner of a con- 
 fessional to pour out the many straits and dis- 
 illusionments of his life. In the end the hermit 
 made answer: "If I can tell thee naught touching 
 the road to the Grail, nevertheless I now know 
 that thou art he concerning whom other pilgrims 
 have enquired of me, for they sought to learn 
 whether a knight in quest of the road to the 
 Holy Grail had passed by. And now tell me by 
 what name men call thee. Art called Parsival? " 
 
 "From my childhood upwards," the Knight 
 made answer. 
 
 "That was the name," the hermit went on, 
 "and so art thou none other than he they 
 sought." 
 
 "Who were they that enquired after the seeker 
 for the Grail, and what the manner of their 
 bearing?" asked Parsival. 
 
 "The first to enquire after thee but that is 
 a good twenty or thirty years ago carried a
 
 Parsival 97 
 
 rod, and together therewith a basket of fresh 
 water fishes, and I therefore had of necessity to 
 set him down for a fisherman. Perchance he 
 had fallen on evil days, but from his countenance 
 and noble bearing he was, meseemed, a man of 
 gentle birth." 
 
 "My father, and none other," quoth Parsival. 
 
 The monk went on: "Not long afterwards, a 
 woman enquired after Parsival, but not, as I 
 mind me now, after the seeker of the Grail. It 
 is only a short time ago since the woman after 
 many years, passed by anew." "Did she put 
 the question for Parsival, the seeker of the 
 Grail? " 
 
 " She spoke of him as of a boy that had run 
 away from home, and had become entangled in 
 error, need, and tribulation." 
 
 "I am that boy, and it was my mother, Heart- 
 ache," quoth Parsival, "and I must now to 
 horse for to overtake her." 
 
 " But thou art no boy," said the hermit. " The 
 wayfaring woman that passed by here half 
 naked and distraught, and dragging a sack 
 of flints behind her, cannot therefore well be
 
 98 Parsival 
 
 thy mother, nor canst thou be the boy for whom 
 she was seeking." 
 
 "When I forsook my mother, I was less than 
 fifteen. I am no more than eighteen years of 
 age this day," quoth Parsival. 
 
 From the little forest shrine that he had him- 
 self built, the hermit then fetched the silver 
 paten, the platter on which he was wont to 
 give the wafer of the Holy Supper to the poor 
 charcoal burners dwelling round about. It was 
 well burnished, and Parsival could behold him- 
 self therein as in a mirror. 
 
 "Witchcraft! " he cried, "My hair has grown 
 white overnight," and because he glared at the 
 hermit fiercely and distrustfully with eyes that 
 yet were young, the other with a sly smile 
 made answer: 
 
 "Time not I is the magician, Sir Knight. 
 That stealthy witch, Time, hath turned thee 
 grey. Let not this change in the course of thy 
 wayfaring and in the eternal changefulness of 
 all things touch thee nearly. Hearken rather 
 to what I may have yet to tell of the third that 
 came to enquire after the seeker for the Grail."
 
 Parsival 99 
 
 Thereupon he told of a Knight behind a black 
 visor that had borne a golden dove for sole de- 
 vice on his sable mail. And once again Parsival 
 must perforce believe that it was the Grail 
 King and his father in one and the same person. 
 The hermit laughed yet louder, and said: "Sir 
 Knight, it cannot be that ye are the son of two 
 fathers." 
 
 Parsival flung himself on his horse, for he held 
 the hedge priest to be in truth a magician. He 
 is mocking and poisoning me, he thought, with 
 treachery and deceit. 
 
 But he was now minded to put all else from 
 him for a season, and to see Blancheflour, his 
 forsaken young wife, once more.
 
 XIV 
 
 HE cathedral bells, and the bells of 
 all the rest of the churches, were 
 tolling when Parsival came to the 
 gate of the city, over which, though 
 Blancheflour had exalted him to be its king, 
 he had never ruled. 
 
 "What do the bells mean?" asked Parsival 
 of a burgher who chanced to pass by. 
 
 "Our aged Queen is being borne for burial," 
 quoth the man. 
 
 "What old Queen is this?" asked the Knight. 
 "But a year ago ye had to my knowing a very 
 youthful damsel for your Queen." 
 
 "There in truth ye are in error," said the com- 
 fortable burgher. "Our widowed Queen entered 
 upon the fiftieth year of her age this very year," 
 and every man knows that she has been widowed 
 for thirty years at the least." 
 "I have knocked at the wrong door then,"
 
 Parsival 101 
 
 Parsival made answer. "For the rest, what was 
 the name of your widowed ruler?" 
 
 "She was called Blancheflour. Her missing 
 husband's name was Parsival. Thirty years 
 ago he left her on the morrow after their wed- 
 ding." 
 
 "Is not the whole of earthly life a nightmare 
 dream?" thought Parsival, as the long kingly 
 mourning train passed out beyond the gates. 
 
 The crypt of this city's sovereign house was a 
 marble temple, built in a little cypress grove 
 without the walls. Many torches were ablaze. 
 Twelve knights bore Blancheflour, in accord 
 with the custom of the times, on an open bier. 
 
 "Aye, thou hast now become Blackthorn 
 Blossom in very truth," thought Parsival, as he 
 gazed on the well-remembered face, now white 
 as fine linen under the parting of white hair. 
 
 She had the aspect of an old woman, yet of a 
 bride withal. For, agreeably to her last wish, 
 they had arrayed her hi her bridal robes of white 
 samite, and wrapped her in clouds of green veils. 
 Sprays and posies of the white sloe blossom were 
 wrought in fine needlework over all her garments.
 
 io2 Parsival 
 
 Parsival was minded to fling himself on the bier 
 and on the dead, but to his terror he was aware 
 that he could neither utter sound, nor stir hand 
 or foot. 
 
 Of a sudden someone beckoned to him. It 
 was the learned Arab. 
 
 After the convoy had passed beyond the 
 gates, the Knight had alighted from his horse, 
 and had made it fast somewhere. Now on sight 
 of the Arab, his power of movement was of a 
 sudden restored to him, and he was thereupon 
 aware that he was walking in grave state behind 
 the bier on the left of the man in the white tur- 
 ban. Amid the clanging of bells, and the chant- 
 ing of the priests, the while the birds were sing- 
 ing, and the dust of the high road choking their 
 nostrils, the Arab spoke to Parsival in the un- 
 moved voice of one who tells a tale: 
 
 "I can tell by thy bearing that thou hast not 
 found the road to the Grail. As concerning 
 myself I am one hundred and twenty years old 
 this day, older than the star-gazers foretold, 
 and had Blancheflour lived but one year more, 
 I should have known how to lead her blindfold
 
 Parsival 103 
 
 to the road to the Grail. For I would have thee 
 know that she never ceased brooding all the time 
 that thou wert gone, save only about the way to 
 the Grail, not, I fear me, for the rightful purpose 
 of finding the holy mystery of the Lord, but of 
 seeing thee, poor Parsival, again. I learnt of the 
 planets, but I never made it known to Blanche- 
 flour, that thou would'st come back on the 
 third day after her death without having found 
 the Grail." 
 
 Parsival asked: "Who is the Knight in silver 
 harness with the silver swan on his casque, that, 
 like to the sun-god, rides on a horse white as 
 snow behind the bier? " 
 
 "That is Lohengrin," said the Arab. "It is 
 thy son. But I counsel thee not to make thyself 
 known to him. The most kindly heart beats 
 in his breast, and all the world loves him and 
 cherishes him. One man alone he hates and 
 seeks as for his bitterest foe, for him that did 
 his mother hurt beyond all healing." 
 
 Then Parsival took himself out of the con- 
 voy, and let the weeping people pass in endless 
 train behind the good Queen's coffin, to her
 
 IO4 Parsival 
 
 grave. Where all men were weeping, none 
 marked it that Parsival was likewise bathed in 
 tears. 
 
 Parsival had forsaken his mother to battle 
 against the world. When he turned back he 
 never found her more. He forsook the Grail, 
 which, when it was borne past him, he did not 
 know for what it was, and when he did, or at 
 least guessed what it might be, he never prevailed 
 to find again. Intent to find it, he forsook his 
 young wife, and cast away an earthly kingdom; 
 for when he came back he found his wife no 
 more, and his own son a stranger to him, who 
 knew him as little as all the rest of them save 
 the old Arab and from him he must needs flee 
 as from an enemy. 
 
 After all these errors and tribulations of his 
 earthly life, it would seem as if something like 
 to a spring too tautly strained had snapped in 
 Parsival's soul. The most exceeding anguish 
 of a wild despair that had driven him out anew 
 from the company of men into waste places of 
 a sudden surceased in a state of the deepest 
 numbness. In a glade in the midst of the forest
 
 Parsival 105 
 
 he alit from his erstwhile fiery steed, took 
 the bridle from its mouth, the saddle from off 
 its back, and with a touch of a switch gave it 
 the freedom of the woods. For himself he doffed 
 his helm, and hung it up together with his sword, 
 shield, and breastplate, in the branches of an 
 oak. 
 
 Thence the golden falcon with the arrow 
 through its breast now gazed down like owner- 
 less treasures on the wild denizens of the wood. 
 But Sir Parsival was left unharnessed and un- 
 armed. When he left the place barefooted and 
 clad in his shift alone, night had fallen, the 
 moon had climbed the tree-tops. A wind sprang 
 up, and the Knight threw a last farewell look 
 on the treasures of his knight errantry, clanging 
 spectre-like in the breeze. 
 
 Thenceforward Parsival became a serving 
 man. He served as a bearer of burdens in cities, 
 as a serf in the hard forced labour of the country- 
 side. No man knew him. Aye, he himself had 
 forgotten his own, but not his mother's, Heart- 
 ache's name. Although he no longer sought to 
 find her, she seemed to him to be wondrously
 
 io6 Parsival 
 
 more fond and near than ever before. His 
 fellows, the other grooms and porters, soon came 
 to take him for an old simpleton, because he 
 was passing gentle, and was oft-times wont to 
 speak to them of a thing beyond their under- 
 standing, of the beauty of the Grail.
 
 XV 
 
 T was an autumn day, and the poor, 
 long-suffering Bearer of Burdens, 
 erst-while Parsival, had finished his 
 day's work in the harbour of a cer- 
 tain town, and was giving ear to the talk among 
 the other wage-earning men who were making 
 holiday. Their talk was of the prowess of a 
 knight who of late had made himself of great re- 
 nown in the world, and bore on his shield the 
 words: "To the strong defiance, for the weak de- 
 fence." Of him folk told many strange tales that 
 singled him out from all the rest of those to whom 
 knight errantry, as men termed it, had brought 
 equal renown. All the world ran to him for 
 aid, as to a mailed archangel, an angel of jus- 
 tice sent of God. The poor folk far and wide 
 surnamed him "Sir Good-at-Need." 
 
 Not once nor twice, but a hundred times, had 
 Sir Good-at-Need acted after the pattern of the 
 Good Samaritan. He used to lift the sick and 
 
 107
 
 io8 Parsival 
 
 wretched objects of all sorts who chanced to 
 cross his path on his snow-white steed, to carry 
 them, walking himself at his horse's head the 
 while, where help and succour awaited them. 
 He used to wend his way into the very humblest 
 cottages, even though he had to bare his curly 
 head, carry his casque under his arm, and bend 
 himself very low. He scattered gold as largesse 
 broadcast and gingerbreads for handsel, and 
 children, above all others, ran after him. 
 
 His fellow knights as a body, and the rich in 
 the land, looked on him askance, and their hate 
 grew the hotter the more that the love of the 
 common people turned to him. 
 
 "There ye have true chivalry," said the Bearer 
 of Burdens on a sudden, after he had learnt of 
 all these matters. "He stands in grace. Would 
 my lot had been as kind while I was yet knight 
 errant. Whoso bears arms must needs be a 
 harbinger of mercy and of peace, else is he re- 
 creant, nothing less." 
 
 At these words of the poor Bearer of Burdens 
 his fellow workmen broke into laughter. "If 
 thou wert knight errant may the devil fly away
 
 Parsival 109 
 
 with me if I were not the terrible Parsival, 
 Queen Blancheflour's man." 
 
 Thereupon, after they had guffawed anew, 
 another said: "Never, for sure, was knight 
 so fierce and cruel as Parsival," and now the 
 poor Bearer of Burdens was listening to his own 
 bloody story. It was, of course, full of false 
 witness; for, knowing nothing of the causes that 
 had moved him, they said that Parsival had 
 been crafty, treacherous, and cruel, a liar and 
 an adventurer. The Evil One, himself, to 
 whom he had bartered himself, had made away 
 with him. For the rest, so they all bellowed, one 
 louder than the other, Parsival was a bonds- 
 man's son; he was not of gentle birth. 
 
 The poor Bearer of Burdens only smiled the 
 while they defamed his past. He thought within 
 himself, I have deserved this and more also, but 
 now I wait patiently trusting in God for grace. 
 
 Meantime a third of his mates had let fall 
 some words concerning Sir Good-at-Need that 
 made him pay close heed anew: "This same 
 knight Sir Good-at-Need is not only a chirurgeon 
 who can staunch wounds, but one that can deal
 
 1 10 Parsival 
 
 them no less shrewdly than Parsival. For he 
 is, wit ye well, in quest of one that dealt his 
 mother a secret hurt, and if he find him, woe 
 betide him. I would liefer lie in the deepest 
 dungeon of Turkey than be the miscreant he 
 seeks." 
 
 Towards evening of the morrow Sir Good-at- 
 Need came riding into the town amid the re- 
 joicings of the common people. They shouted 
 " Hosannah ! " strewed flowers and green branches 
 in his path, and one or two women were carried 
 so far by vain superstition as to fling themselves 
 before his horse for it to step over them. They 
 fondly believed to be healed thereby of their 
 incurable ills. It seemed to be an odd chance 
 that the knight, on coming to the harbour, called 
 from his saddle, of all men, to the poor Bearer 
 of Burdens, and bade him show him the way. 
 
 Poor unknown Parsival had meantime passed 
 through the most terrible hours and moments 
 of his life. He was well aware that Sir Good-at- 
 Need was none other than his son, Lohengrin, 
 and feared to be made known to him for the man 
 who had despoiled his mother, Blancheflour,
 
 Parsival in 
 
 of her life's happiness, and had done her slow 
 and deadly hurt. Death at the hands of his 
 son did not seem to him the worst of all; but a 
 veritable agony of horror overtook him at the 
 thought that he should be hated and spurned 
 for his worst enemy by the man whose father 
 he was and whom he loved. Therefore he made 
 a miserable object in the knight's eyes, as he 
 made answer after this fashion. 
 
 "If thou art knight errant, and thou askest 
 of none other than of me to point thee the road 
 thou shouldst take, may God grant me to set 
 thee right. Make no more quest for him that 
 did thy mother secret hurt." 
 
 "I give thee thanks for thy counsel, old man," 
 said Lohengrin, with hearty kindliness, but the 
 Bearer of Burdens went on: "And now in token 
 of peace, alight from thy horse, break bread 
 with me, and suffer me to tell thee certain mat- 
 ters concerning the Holy Grail and concerning 
 Parsival." 
 
 At the outset Lohengrin thought that some 
 mischance or other had turned the old porter's 
 brain, but when he heard him touch on the name
 
 H2 Parsival 
 
 of Parsival and on the Holy Grail he was re- 
 solved to do the weak old man's pleasure. He 
 lifted him on his steed, and led the horse by its 
 bridle rein to the door of the wretched hut of 
 planks where his poor Lazarus purposed to sup 
 with him. 
 
 So Parsival was now seated on the milk-white 
 steed of his beloved son, Lohengrin, without 
 the other misdoubting who he was. What 
 wonder that for secret joy he wept salt tears 
 that would not be denied. 
 
 The while the meal lasted the shining paladin, 
 beloved of God, was alone with his unknown 
 father. When they had broken bread together 
 and had taken the first sup from the common 
 cup, they both heard the sound of bells, and 
 forthwith were aware that the sound did not 
 come from any cathedral in the town. Parsival, 
 the old Bearer of Burdens, then knew that grace, 
 love, and reconciliation were now close at hand, 
 and he began to tell of his own wayfarings as 
 if of those of another man. He spoke of Heart- 
 ache, Parsival's mother. He named her as 
 though illumined of the spirit, the All-Mother.
 
 Parsival 113 
 
 Blancheflour, too, he said, no less than Parsival, 
 would have been of Heartache's stock. He made 
 an end of speaking. "Thou and I, we two, are 
 of Heartache's stock, my son." 
 
 And the knight now learnt the nearer hap and 
 mishap of Parsival, how he set forth to avenge 
 his mother on his father; he heard tell of the 
 Grail that Parsival found and lost again, of 
 Gornemant and of the sick Amfortas, who was 
 Parsival's father, and therewith Lohengrin's 
 grandsire. It was revealed to him what had 
 befallen Parsival at the hands of the fisherman 
 and of the Sable Knight; how his father's loving- 
 kindness had striven first by counsel and then 
 by force to set his feet in the right way. 
 
 "My hour hath now come," quoth Parsival, 
 Bearer of Burdens. "Meseemeth, as if I had 
 ever had Heartache encompassing me round 
 about unseen, and I shall furthermore fall in 
 with her over yonder whither I shall fare. And 
 if she was stark and stem and oft-times dealt 
 harshly with me, yet she brought me into the 
 world, and what man is there that would not 
 love his mother? Heartache, Heartache every-
 
 ii4 Parsival 
 
 where! I have sought for her, and have found 
 her in full measure. But Salvator is yonder, the 
 Castle of the Grail with its paladins, and the 
 secret dome that is made two-fold in the broad 
 stream of life. Salvator is there, where God- 
 like beings of their own free will suffer torment 
 to the end that they may release the world from 
 its burden, and yet are immortal in the light of 
 their near-by Paradise." 
 
 Lohengrin gave thanks to the old man, whose 
 avowal had moved him deeply, and rode off 
 thence into solitary places.
 
 XVI 
 
 UT Parsival, Bearer of Burdens, did 
 not cease to hear the bells of the 
 Grail pealing louder, and ever 
 louder. He smiled quietly, and 
 thought within himself: "Now get thee gone. 
 Thy time hath now come, serf Parsival." 
 
 And the aged messenger of the Grail, Gorne- 
 mant, followed by a little knightly train, was 
 bending low, even now entering, into the hut. 
 One and all within that wretched hovel they bent 
 the knee before Parsival, the poor Bearer of 
 Burdens, who rose to his feet to greet them, and 
 awaited their embassage. 
 
 "Amfortas, thy father, the twenty and first 
 keeper of the Grail, hath sent us. Twenty have 
 passed before him in the world, and of them more 
 than half have passed before him into the King- 
 dom of Heaven. This day Amfortas hath doffed 
 the crown of Salvator from his head. His 
 
 "5
 
 n6 Parsival 
 
 piercing cry of pain is likewise stilled. Never 
 more will he offer up the godlike sacrifice. 
 
 "He sends thee greeting, and bids me deliver 
 this embassage: 'My son, Parsival, the Grail is 
 in the world an alien miracle. Many say Sal- 
 vator is a realm founded in the air, because, 
 so they say, peace dwells above the clouds but 
 war upon earth. Now, Parsival, in the air are 
 lightnings, the fruitful rain, the radiance of the 
 light, of the stars, of the moon, of the dawn, 
 and of the sunset. What man could live and 
 not drink air? Who without air could see and 
 hear? Who could think, believe, know aught of 
 God and of the world, were his playground not 
 the free realm of the spirit? So deem, and thou 
 wilt, the world, the Grail, peace and Salvator, 
 to be no more than a realm of the air, if but we 
 believe that with its secret churches, its peace, 
 its bliss, and its shining paladins, it is. The 
 world is Heartache's. Salvator belongs to bliss. 
 But even as bliss hath come into the world in 
 the guise of heavenly faith, so Heartache, too, 
 has ever been a guest in Salvator.' 
 
 "Dost thou believe in reconciliation by the
 
 Parsival 117 
 
 Grail, in Salvator, and in the secret church, 
 Parsival?" 
 
 "I do believe therein," quoth the Bearer of 
 Burdens with shining eyes. 
 
 "Then fall down upon thy knees," Gorne- 
 mant went on, "that at thy sire's behest we 
 may set upon thy head the crown of joy and 
 sorrow of the Grail."
 
 'T^HE following pages contain advertisements of 
 books on kindred subjects.
 
 NEW MACMILLAN PLAYS 
 
 Children of the Earth 
 
 BY ALICE BROWN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "MY LOVE AND I," ETC. 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 na 
 
 This is the ten thousand dollar American prize play. From thou- 
 sands of manuscripts submitted to Mr. Ames of the Little Theatre, 
 Miss Brown's was chosen as being the most notable, both in theme 
 and characterization. Miss Brown has a large following as novelist 
 and short story writer, and there is no doubt but that her play will 
 be found to exhibit those rare qualities of writing and those keen 
 analyses of human motives which have given her eminence in other 
 forms of literature. 
 
 JOHN MASEFIELD'S NEW VOLUME 
 
 Philip the King, and Other Poems 
 
 BY JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE TRAGEDY OF POMPEY," "THE EVERLASTING MERCY," 
 "THE DAFFODIL FIELDS" 
 
 Cloth, izmo, $1.25 net 
 
 "Mr. Masefield's new poetical drama is a piece of work such as 
 only the author of 'Nan' and 'The Tragedy of Pompey' could have 
 written, tense in situation and impressive in its poetry. ... In 
 addition to this important play, the volume contains some new and 
 powerful narrative poems of the sea the men who live on it and their 
 ships. There are also some shorter lyrics as well as an impressive 
 poem on the present war in Europe which expresses, perhaps, better 
 than anything yet written, the true spirit of England in the present 
 struggle." 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 The Nigger : An American Play in Three Acts 
 
 BY EDWARD SHELDON 
 
 Attractively bound in decorated cloth covers 
 Price, $1.25 net; postage extra 
 
 One of the most vivid and thrilling dramas that has appeared 
 in recent years. Readers who did not see the play will welcome 
 this opportunity to become acquainted with a great work, 
 while those who were fortunate enough to witness a perform- 
 ance may revive impressions and recollections at will in study 
 or reading room. 
 
 "The Nigger" was one of the first plays to be produced in 
 the New Theatre, in New York, at which time the Boston 
 Transcript said of it: '"The Nigger' is a swift, plausible, cumu- 
 lative, and absorbing dramatic narrative that holds interest 
 unrelaxed, and awakes answering emotions. . . The author 
 has keen and fine imagination that has often guided him truly 
 into insight in character. Is exciting in suspense and goading 
 in climax." 
 
 The Garden of Paradise 
 
 BY EDWARD SHELDON 
 Author of "Romance," "The Nigger," etc. 
 
 Cloth, I2tno 
 
 Taking Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mer- 
 maid as his basis, Mr. Sheldon tells with a great deal of charm 
 the story of the youngest daughter of the sea-king, who stakes 
 everything on winning the love of a mortal so that thereby 
 she may share his immortal soul and one day enter into the 
 infinite garden of paradise. That Mr. Sheldon knows how to 
 write drama his previous contributions to the stage have 
 proved beyond a doubt, and while the present work is slightly 
 different in character from its predecessors it reveals the same 
 sure touch, the same understanding of the fundamentals of 
 dramatic technique, and in addition a poetic quality of no 
 mean order. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 Romance: A Play 
 
 By EDWARD SHELDON 
 AUTHOR OF "THE NIGGER," ETC. 
 
 Cloth, Frontispiece, $1.25 net; postage extra 
 
 Mr. Sheldon can be relied upon to provide drama that is not only 
 good from a technical standpoint, but unusual in subject-matter. 
 "The Nigger," which proved to be one of the sensations of the New 
 Theatre's short career, is now followed by "Romance," a play more 
 admirable, perhaps, in its construction, and of universal appeal. As 
 a book the story has lost none of its brilliance; hi fact, the sharpness 
 of its character delineation, the intensity and reality of its plot, and 
 the lyrical beauty of some of its passages are, if possible, more ap- 
 parent on the printed page than in the theatre. There is little doubt 
 that the tremendous success which the drama made when foot-lighted 
 is to be duplicated upon its appearance in this form. 
 
 "It is full of literary flavor, delicate imagination and romantic 
 truth, and it is one of the plays which go as well in print as they do 
 on the stage, and vice versa." Syracuse Post Standard. 
 
 "It is unique in its conception, bringing in two romances and 
 two entirely different periods." Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer. 
 
 "Those who have missed seeing one of the most delightful plays 
 of recent years now have an opportunity to familiarize themselves 
 with the dainty sentiment, clean humor and delightful romance from 
 whence the play took its title." Boston Post. 
 
 "An excellent reading play . . . holds the fancy with the same 
 tenacity as a story that it did as a swift moving scene upon the stage." 
 Chicago Daily Tribune. 
 
 "The play unites the setting and costumes of a romantic comedy 
 with the deep emotion of a modern problem drama. Throughout it 
 is the work of an artist." Continent. 
 
 "The play is moving, dramatic, appealing. It is good to read, as 
 it has been proved good to see." Duluth Herald. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 Van Zorn: A Comedy 
 
 BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net 
 
 "The setting is American and the characters are true to 
 the American type. . . . The second act is drama in its 
 highest expression." San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 "He has done something unique. His comedy depicts life 
 among the artists in Manhattan. It is the first time it has 
 been done by one of the initiated." Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 
 
 "'Van Zorn,' by Edwin Arlington Robinson, might be called 
 a comedy of temperament, introspection and destiny. It 
 tells an interesting story and is stimulative to thought." 
 
 Providence Journal. 
 
 "An effective presentation of modern life in New York 
 City, in which a poet shows his skill at prose playwriting . . . 
 he brings into the American drama to-day a thing it sadly 
 lacks, and that is character." Boston Transcript. 
 
 PERCY MACKAYE'S NEW POEMS 
 
 The Present Hour 
 
 BY PERCY MACKAYE 
 Author of "The Scarecrow," "Sappho and Phaon," etc. 
 
 Cloth, I2mo, $1.2$ net 
 
 "The Present Hour" is a vital expression of America in 
 themes of war and peace. The first section (War) contains the 
 gripping narrative poem "Fight: The Tale of a Gunner," and 
 a series of powerful poems dealing with the great struggle in 
 Europe. Few war-poems of the many published in this coun- 
 try and England reveal such sincerity, force and imagery, 
 as these of Mr. MacKaye. Among them are "American Neu- 
 trality," "Peace," "Wilson," "Louvain," "Rheims," "The 
 Muffled Drums," "Magna Carta," "France," "A Prayer of 
 the Peoples,'* etc. The second section (Peace) includes his 
 widely read poems, "Goethals," "Panama Hymn," "School," 
 "The Heart in the Jar," and other representative work. The 
 volume is an important addition to Mr. MacKaye's long list 
 of books and a valuable contribution to the poetry of our tune. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 A LIST OF PLAYS 
 
 Leonid Andreyev's Anathema $1.23 net 
 
 Alice Brown's Children of Earth (Prize Play) 1.25 net 
 
 Clyde Fitch's The Climbers , 75 net 
 
 Girl with the Green Eyes i 25 net 
 
 Her Own Way !?S net 
 
 Stubbornness of Geraldine >* ne t 
 
 The Truth | 7S net 
 
 Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. 3 Parts. Each 1.50 net 
 
 Hermann Hagedorn's Makers of Madness i.oonet 
 
 Henry Arthur Jones's 
 
 Whitewashing of Julia 75 net 
 
 Saints and Sinners '. 75 net 
 
 The Crusaders 75 net 
 
 Michael and His Lost Angel 75 net 
 
 Jack London's Scorn of Women 
 
 Theft 
 
 Mackaye's Jean D'Arc 
 
 Sappho and Phaon 
 
 Fenris the Wolf 
 
 Mater 
 
 Canterbury Pilgrims 
 
 The Scarecrow 
 
 A Garland to Sylvia 
 
 John Masefield's The Tragedy of Pompey 
 
 Philip, the King 
 
 William Vaughn Moody'3 
 
 The Faith Healer 
 
 Stephen Phillip's Ulysses . 
 The Sin of David . . 
 
 lero 
 Pietro of Siena 
 
 Phillips and Carr. Faust . . 
 Edward Sheldon's The Nigger 
 
 Romance 
 
 The Garden of Paradise 
 
 Katriaa Trask's In the Vanguard . . 
 Rabindranath Tagore's The Post Office 
 
 Chitra 
 
 The King of the Dark Chamber 
 
 Robinson, Edwin A. Van Zorn . . . 
 Sarah King Wiley's Coming of Philibert 
 
 Alcestis 
 
 Yeats's Poems and Plays, Vol. IT, Revised Edition 
 
 Hour Glass (and others) 
 
 The Green Helmet and Other Poems 
 
 Yeats and Lady Gregory's Unicorn from the Stars 
 Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot. New Edition. 
 
 The War God 
 The Next Religion 
 Paster Saints , 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
 . 25 net 
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 25 net 
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 .25 net 
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 .75 net 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 SepSO 6 < 
 Oct 28 6 4 
 
 Nov\3& 4 . 
 
 RECE 1 
 
 MAIN LOAN 
 
 ED 
 
 DESK 
 
 NO\Ll6 11164 
 
 \L 
 
 RjLJ'D COL Iff. 
 
 APR 4 1957 
 
 Ju!l?'6d 
 4UL221968 
 
 Book Slip-35m-7,'63(D8684s4)4280 
 
 JAN 9 1970 
 
 P.M. 
 
 3! 4! 51 6
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 PT2616P25E50 
 
 L 005 701 548 9 
 
 man 
 nous 
 
 y as an allegory of lite 
 with an application to mod- 
 ern conditions. 1 ^e trans- 
 lator has done his work 
 well, retaining to a remark- 
 able degree the simplicity 
 and grace oi: the original. 
 
 AutnorizcJ 
 
 By OAKLE
 
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