which seem never to rest, but always to look and search for something
that they never find. Yet now and then a cruel light comes into them
and makes them blaze for an instant, and his hard lips smile a little,
and then his face grows stern and gloomy again. He is a wicked
magician. Once he wanted to join the Knights of the Grail. He could
even be their king, he thought. But the Grail chose its own knights and
it did not choose him. Then he swore that he would be avenged upon the
Grail knights; he would tempt them away from the temple, he would
overthrow them, he would find a way to steal the Grail itself. It was
for this that he learned his magic. He built an enchanted castle not
far from the Temple of the Grail and filled it with every kind of
pleasure that he could devise. Then he tried to entice good knights to
come to his castle, and if any knight came, if any stayed in the
enchanted halls to eat or drink or dance or play, that knight was lost
forever. He could go back to his old friends and his old life no more,
and his use in the world was ended.
"Again I see a woman--a woman yet more strange than this man. You will
think so when I tell you who she is. You remember the wife of the King,
whose daughter danced before the King and pleased him so much that he
promised her any gift she should ask; how the Queen told her to ask for
the head of the great prophet, who was in prison, and how the head was
cut off and brought to her. This woman whom I see was that Queen. The
old stories say that she saw the Saviour as He passed, bearing His
cross upon His back, and that she laughed at Him. He only looked at her
sorrowfully and spoke no word. But always from that time she was forced
to wander through the world, and laugh at everything that was true and
good. Can you think of anything more horrible? After a long, weary time
she wished that she might die, but still through all lands she
journeyed, laughing at everything she saw that was sweet and pure and
holy. The wish to die grew and grew till it was her only longing. But
she could not die. For hundreds of years she has lived unchanged. Some
say that she can never die or grow old till the best knight of all the
world shall come and pardon her great sins. Others say that she must
live till one comes whom she cannot tempt away by her beauty from the
path he follows.
"For she is very beautiful. It is not the beauty of a common woman that
she has, but something far beyond it. She can be tender, sweet, gentle,
enticing, and then in an instant proud, defiant, radiant. Perhaps the
wicked magician has given her some of this wonderful beauty by his
magic, for she is in his power and helps him to entrap knights into his
castle, where they lose all hope of returning to the life of the world
and of doing good in it. She does not wish to do this, but the magician
compels her. So always she must tempt and entice at his command the
knights who come near his castle, and always she must long for one to
come whom she cannot tempt, for then she will be free. The knights of
the Grail are not the men for whom she waits. To tempt them is only too
easy. Even their King cannot resist her.
"I see the King of the Grail now. He holds a spear in his hand that is
almost as great and wonderful a thing as the Grail itself. From the
point of the spear flows a little stream of blood. It trickles down the
shaft of the spear to the King's hand that holds it, but the blood does
not stain the hand; it flows over it and leaves it clean and white. It
is the very spear with which the Roman soldier wounded the side of the
Saviour, and ever since that time the blood has run from its point. But
the King has wandered too far away from the Temple of the Grail and too
near the magician's enchanted castle. The magician sees him and sends
the woman to try to bring him within his power. Such wonderful beauty
as hers the King has never seen before. For one instant in looking at
her he forgets to guard the spear; he lets it go from his hand, the
magician seizes it and strikes the King with it in the side. He is
borne back to the temple with just such a wound as that other which
this same spear made so many years ago. And the magician has the spear.
As he holds it the blood flows from its point and trickles down the
shaft, and as it flows over his hand it stains it a deep, ugly red. He
carries the spear to his castle. He has stolen this, and now he will
wait on and watch for a chance to steal the Grail.
"And the wound in the King's side will not heal. All that can be done
with medicines and balsams and ointments is done, but they are of no
use. Many years pass--yes, just while we are looking into the fire--and
still the wound is the same, still it burns and stings, and still it
bleeds again whenever the King uncovers the Grail so that it may feed
the knights who are in the temple and help those who are far away. Some
wounds, some sicknesses, the Grail itself can cure, but it cannot cure
this, or it will not. Yet once, while the King knelt before it, he saw
words that shone like fire in the halo around it, and they said: 'Wait
for the simple Fool, taught by pity, for him I have chosen.' Perhaps
you do not see quite what that means. Well, I don't think the King
quite knows what it means either, but he knows that he has something to
wait for, and that is better than knowing nothing at all about it. That
was years ago, and still the wound burns and stings, and still it
bleeds when the King uncovers the Grail.
"When we look into the fire we can go back through the years just as
well as forward. So now, going back for a little while and far away
from the Temple of the Grail, I see something very different from what
we have seen before. I see a boy who lives with his mother in a forest.
His father was a knight and was killed in battle. His mother feared
that when he grew up he would want to be a knight too, and would be
killed in the same way, so she brought him here to the forest and kept
him away from the great world where men live and work and fight, and
never let him know anything about knights or battles or tournaments or
the courts of kings. She lets him learn to shoot with a bow as he grows
up, and to hunt the beasts of the woods. He can hit any bird that flies
with his arrows, and he runs so fast that he can catch the deer by the
horns.
"Yet he does not know that men wear armor and fight with spears and
swords, and he has never heard of an army or a battle. Perhaps he may
be almost enough of a simple fool about these things to help the King
of the Grail."
"I don't think he was a fool at all," said the little girl, "if his
mother wouldn't let him hear anything about such things."
"I think," I answered, "that the letters around the Grail could not
have meant quite what we mean by a fool. The Grail would not choose any
such person, I am sure. They must have meant some one who was good and
simple and had not learned the ways of the world. And then you know the
letters said, 'taught by pity,' so I suppose he is to be a fool at all
only till he is 'taught by pity.' Well, the mother might have known
that she could not keep her boy in this ignorance forever, and so one
day he meets three knights riding through the forest. He is filled with
wonder and delight at their polished armor, their waving plumes, and
their long spears, with their glittering points. He asks them who they
are and what all these wonderful things are for. They tell him that
they are knights, and everything else that he wants to know, and then
he runs home to his mother and tells her that he wants to go away and
see the world and be a knight too.
"She tries to tell him that knights are wicked men, but he will not
believe it, and he begs her to let him go. She sees that she cannot
keep him, that all her care has been lost, and at last she says that he
may go. He has no armor, but perhaps he may get that some time. He
takes his bow and his arrows and wanders away through the forest, and
his mother looks after him till she can see no more through her tears.
"We are back near the Temple of the Grail now. I see a beautiful, deep
forest. An old knight and two young squires are lying on a green bank
and are just awaking at the sound of trumpets from the temple. They are
scarcely awake when a strange creature is seen coming toward them. It
is a woman upon a galloping horse. And the horse is strange enough too.
Its mane is so long that it drags upon the ground, and then the wind
catches it and blows it about till the horse looks like a hurrying
black cloud, and its eyes show through the cloud like flashes of
lightning. The woman's eyes sometimes are deep and full of fire, and
sometimes they look dull and cold, almost dead. She is not beautiful.
She has a dark face, burned as if she had travelled much under hot
suns. Her long black hair is in disorder and flies all about her in the
wind. Her dress is in disorder too, and it is fastened around the waist
by a girdle of snake skin, with long ends that hang down to the ground.
Everything about her looks wild and terrible. She is a woman whom you
would not care to meet on a lonely road after dark and on a horse like
this. Yet if you looked at her face more closely you would not find
anything cruel in it, but you would find a great deal of sorrow and
suffering.
"You can never guess who this woman is, so I must tell you. She is the
very same who helps the wicked magician to entice knights into his
castle. She looks very different now, to be sure, but it is a strange
life that she leads altogether. It is only when she is asleep that the
magician has power over her. When she is awake she tries to atone a
little for her great sins by serving the Holy Grail. She rides all over
the world and brings news of battles or messages from knights of the
Grail who are in distant countries, or she stays here and finds work to
do at home. But always, because of her curse, she laughs, even at the
good that she herself tries to do. And at last the longing for rest
comes upon her again till she cannot resist it. She sinks to sleep, and
then the magician calls her. She is forced to obey him, he gives her
back that wonderful beauty, and she helps him in his wicked work.
"Now she has been all the way to Arabia to find a balsam for the King's
wound. She gives it to the old knight, in a little flask, and then
throws herself upon the ground to rest. At the same time there comes a
train of knights, bearing the King of the Grail in a litter toward the
lake for his morning bath. He thanks the woman for bringing the balsam,
but she only laughs at what she has done and at his thanks. It will do
him no good, she says. Alas, he knows too well that it will do him
none. Nobody can do him good but the simple Fool, taught by pity. And
so they carry him on to his bath.
"The old knight stays behind. 'Why should we try all these things,' he
thinks again, 'when none can help him but the simple Fool?' At this
instant a swan flies up from the lake and then suddenly flutters and
falls upon the ground. There is an arrow through its heart. Everybody
who sees it cries out in horror, for it is one of the laws of this
place that no animal shall be harmed. What man cruel enough to kill
this beautiful, harmless swan can have found his way here, where none
can come who is not chosen by the Grail? In a moment some squires run
in, bringing the murderer of the swan. He is scarcely a man at all,
hardly more than a boy, and he carries a bow and arrow. It is the same
boy whom we saw living in the woods with his mother. The old knight
looks at him sorrowfully. 'Did you kill this poor bird?' he asks.
"'Yes, to be sure,' says the young man,' I can hit anything.'
"The old knight talks with him kindly and tells him how wrong it is to
kill harmless things. His mother never taught him that. She only tried
to keep him from knowing anything about knights. The old man makes him
see how cruel he has been, and at last the boy throws away his arrows
and breaks his bow. Now the knight asks him who he is, whence he comes,
and who was his father, but he can answer nothing. Indeed, he knows
little enough of these things, for his mother never told him. His
mother and the life that he led with her in the forest are all that he
can remember to tell the old knight. Even of his mother and of his old
life the strange woman who lies upon the grass can tell more than he,
for she has seen him and his mother often, though they did not see her,
and she laughs at the poor woman who thought she could keep her son
from ever knowing anything of arms and battles. She tells him, too,
that his mother is dead; she saw her die as she passed, because he had
left her. The boy is moved at last, frightened, bewildered. He never
knew anybody but his mother; she was his only friend; she taught him
all he ever learned; and she is dead because of him. What shall he do
now?
"The King and his train come back again from the lake and pass on
toward the temple. The woman feels the terrible weariness coming upon
her again. She struggles against it, but it is of no use. She sinks
upon the ground behind the low bushes and sleeps. The magician can have
her now if he wants her, and surely he will want her.
"The old knight has been watching the boy. 'Can it be,' he thinks,
'that this is the Fool, taught by pity, for whom we were to wait?' That
he is a fool the old man thinks is clear enough, but how could he kill
the swan? He cannot have been taught very much by pity. But perhaps the
time for that has not come yet, and surely he could not get here at all
if the Grail had not chosen him in some way. Perhaps if he sees the
King, so pale and sick with his wound, and knows how he has suffered
with it these many years, he may be moved to pity and may learn some
needful things. So the old knight leads him gently away toward the
Temple of the Grail.
"They walk through the forest and among the rocks, and as they go there
comes to them a sound of chimes. It grows clearer as they go on, till
they reach the temple, and then it is over their heads. They are in a
grand, beautiful hall that is something like a church, but not quite.
There are tall pillars and arches, and high above everything is the
dome, so high that, as one looks up into it, its loftiest curves seem
dim and misty and the eye loses itself in trying to see how high it is.
Yet all the light of the great hall streams down from there, and down
from there too comes the sound of the bells.
"The knights of the Grail are coming into the hall and sitting at two
tables, long and curved, so that they make a great circle just under
the dome. On the tables before them are cups, but nothing else. As the
knights come they sing in chorus, and voices up in the dome and others
still higher answer their song, while from the height far above them
all still rings the soft voice of the chimes. And now the King of the
Grail is borne in upon his couch and is brought to the highest place in
the hall. Before him something is carried covered with purple cloth. It
is the Holy Grail itself, and the time has come when it must be
uncovered, that it may feed and strengthen its knights.
"But the King fears. It is when the Grail is uncovered and when it does
so much good to all the others, that his wound always bleeds again and
the pain of it is most terrible. Perhaps you think he is not very brave
to delay what he knows he must do, but only think of that dreadful
wound that can never be cured but by the one who is so long in coming;
yes, think of the slow, weary years that he has waited for the simple
Fool, and you will not wonder that it is a terrible thing to him to
uncover the Grail again. But the voices up in the dome still sing the
promise: 'Wait for the simple Fool, taught by pity, for him I have
chosen.' The knights gently bid their King do his duty. He makes a sign
to the boys who have brought the Grail. They uncover it and place it in
his hand. Everything else in the hall grows dim, while one clear ray of
light falls from the dome straight upon the Grail, and the red blood
that is in it shines through the crystal of the goblet as if it were a
light itself.
"A feeling of peace and gladness comes upon all, even upon the King.
But now the Grail grows dimmer. The boys cover it again and the old
light comes slowly back into the hall. All the cups on the tables are
filled with wine, and beside each one is a piece of bread. It is thus
that the Holy Grail feeds its knights. But the King does not eat, and
suddenly he grows paler and presses his hand to his side. His wound is
bleeding again and his squires quickly carry him away. The knights
leave the hall too. The old knight is still watching the boy. If he is
the Fool that was promised, if he is to be taught by pity, surely he
must pity the poor King and he will ask something about him, why he
suffers so, or what is his wound. But the old knight waits and the boy
says nothing. 'Do you know what you have seen?' the knight asks. The
boy only shakes his head. Then he has not been moved at all; he does
not pity. 'Begone,' says the knight, 'you are good for nothing,' and he
sends him away and is alone. And still from the dome, far up and out of
sight, comes the chiming of the bells. If the old man could hear it
right, surely it would say to him again: 'Wait for the simple Fool,
taught by pity, for him I have chosen.'
"The Temple of the Grail is gone now. We are in the castle of the
wicked magician. He has been thinking too of the young man--the boy--
the Fool, who was at the Temple of the Grail, and he knows more about
him than the poor old knight. He knows that if he is ever to steal the
Holy Grail, as he so long has hoped to do, he must get this Fool into
his power, of all people in the world. He has a magic mirror in which
he can see him. He sees that he has left the Temple of the Grail and is
coming nearer his own castle.
"Now he needs the help of the woman, the woman who is sleeping and
cannot resist him. He lights a magic fire, right there where you see
that blue flame in our own fire, he speaks magic words, and the woman
rises out of the very blue flame itself, and stands before him. But how
different she is from that woman we saw among the Grail knights! She
had no beauty then. Now it is radiant, burning, blinding. All that
might make the beauty of a hundred women--the pride, the tenderness,
the stateliness, the modesty, the fierceness, the gentleness, the
rounded form, the glowing color, the waves of hair, the deep eyes, now
flashing and fiery, and now soft and dewy--are hers. The magician
smiles as he sees her. With her to help him, what can he not do? He
tells her whom she is to entice into his power. She will not do it, she
says. He reminds her that if she cannot entice the Fool she will
herself be saved from all her wanderings and her weary life. He need
not remind her of anything. She cannot resist him any more than she
could resist the sleep that came upon her. What he commands she must
do.
"Still the magician sees the boy approaching. He calls to the knights
of the castle to defend it against him. They run out in a crowd to meet
the Fool. He snatches weapons from the foremost of them and fights them
all at once. Some he wounds and all he drives before him, for the
knights that are in the magician's power quickly grow to be cowards.
Not all of them together can keep him back.
"And now I see the garden of the castle. It is full of big, gay-colored,
gorgeous flowers. They trail along the ground, they cluster upon the
terraces, they climb upon the walls of the castle and of the garden, and
they clutch at the ramparts and twine and twist about them. I suppose I
must say that they are beautiful flowers, but they are not of the sort
that I like. Anybody can see that there is magic about them. The earth
and the water, the air and the sunshine, never would make such flowers.
It might not be easy to say why, but just a single look at them is
enough to make one feel sure that they are all poisonous. On the wall of
the garden, with a sword in his hand, stands the Fool, looking down into
it and wondering at the flowers. There were none in the least like these
in the forest where he lived with his mother, and none about the Temple
of the Grail.
"But what is this more wonderful sight still that he sees? Are the
flowers alive, and are they running about and playing together? It is a
crowd of girls, with queer, bright colored gowns that make them look
for all the world like the huge flowers of the garden. They have just
run out of the castle and they are all in confusion, and are crying and
complaining because the knights, who were their play-fellows, have been
beaten and wounded. Who is he that has done it? Where is he? If they
could find him they would tear him all to little bits, you would think.
And then they do find him. There he stands on the wall, looking down at
them and wondering. And when he says that he will play with them
instead of the knights, they forget all about everybody but him in a
moment, and instead of quarrelling with him or trying to punish him for
wounding their knights, they only quarrel with one another, because
every one of them wants him all for herself.
"He has come down from the wall and they all gather around him,
chattering and struggling for him. He does not seem to care half so
much for them as they do for him, and when he sees that they will do
nothing but quarrel about him he turns to go away again, but a voice
calls him and tells him to stay. He turns again and stops, and all the
living flowers run away, chattering and laughing at him. The voice that
called him was the woman's, He is bewildered when he sees her. He has
never seen such beauty before, any more than you or I ever have. For an
instant he thinks that she is another of the strange flowers of this
strange garden. Yet her beauty does not seem to move him very much.
Perhaps that is because he is a Fool.
"But she speaks to him not at all as the other living flowers did. At
first she makes him remember the old years when he was with his mother,
how she cared for him in everything, and how she tried to keep him from
knowing those things which she dreaded that he should learn. Then she
tells him again how she died when he had left her. This, she thinks,
with what she is to say next, may move him, and indeed it does, but not
as she meant that it should. The great sorrow for his mother comes upon
him again, and stronger than when he heard first that she was dead. He
weeps now and throws himself upon the ground, and nothing can comfort
him.
"The woman tries to console him now. She tells him that if he will but
stay he may have all the pleasures of the magician's castle, and she
will love him, she, the most beautiful woman in the whole world. But he
does not heed her, the Fool--he is thinking of other things. He
remembers the King and his wound. So much he remembers that he almost
feels the wound in himself. And as the woman bends above him there
comes another thought. Nobody has ever told him, yet somehow now he
knows, that it was she who tempted the King when he got that wound,
just as she tries to tempt him now. I think that it is his own great
sorrow that has made him know something of what another's sorrow must
be, and when he has remembered the King and has felt the wound himself,
all this has helped him to see and to know much more. Perhaps this is
the way that he is 'taught by pity.'
"The woman cannot move him more, cannot tempt him, but now the magician
himself stands on the wall of the castle with the spear in his hand.
The blood still flows from the point and trickles down the shaft to his
hand and stains it that deep, ugly red. He poises the spear a moment
and then hurls it at the Fool. But it will not strike him. It stops
above his head and hangs in the air. The Fool lifts his hand and grasps
the spear. The blood from its point runs down the shaft and over his
hand, and leaves it clean and white. He only shakes the spear in his
hand, and the castle and the garden tremble and fall, as the fire here
falls together, and they are gone.
"Once more we are near the Temple of the Grail. The place is at the
edge of woods which reach away in one direction, while in the other are
fields and meadows. It is spring, and the green of the trees is fresh
and light, and the fields are covered with flowers. They are not like
the flowers of that magic garden. Their bright little cups hold cool
drops of dew, and the air is full of their perfume. The old knight is
here. He has heard a sound like a groan from the little thicket of low
bushes and brambles at the border of the wood. He searches, and brings
out a woman--the same woman. She is still asleep, but in a moment she
slowly awakes. She is no longer beautiful. She is out of the magician's
power now, even if he is not buried under his ruined castle. She is
ready to serve the Grail.
"The Grail! Alas! nobody serves the Grail now. The poor King, since
that last time when the Fool saw him uncover the Grail, will touch it
no more. He fears too much the pain of his wound. It cannot feed or
help its knights now, and they cannot go any more to carry help into
far-off lands. But to-day the King has promised that he will uncover it
for one last time, for this is Good Friday, when the dove comes to
renew the power of the Grail.