" Then, says the chronicler, "he saw her
visage; yet he wept not greatly, but sighed. And so he did all the
observance of the service himself, both the dirge at night and the mass
on the morrow." Not till every rite was performed, not till the earth
had closed over the marble coffin, did Launcelot swoon.
I know nothing in fiction so piteous as the words that tell of his
dreary, mortal sorrow. "Then, Sir Launcelot never after ate but little
meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead; and then he
sickened more and more, and dried and dwined away; for the bishop nor
none of his fellows might make him to eat, and little he drank; so that
he waxed shorter by a cubit than he was, and the people could not know
him; for evermore day and night he prayed; but needfully as nature
required, sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep; and always he was lying
groveling on King Arthur's and Queen Guenever's tomb. And there was no
comfort that his fellows could make him; it availed nothing."
We know it can not last long; we know that the morning is fast
approaching, when they will find him "stark dead, and lying as he had
smiled;" when they will bear him forth, according to his vow, to his
resting-place in Joyous Guard; when there will be pronounced over him
that famous funeral oration--the truest, the simplest, the noblest, I
think, that ever was spoken over the body of a sinful man.
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