With that the Good Knight departeth, and they commend him to God, and
he them in like sort. Messire Gawain and Lancelot go their way back
toward the court of King Arthur, and Perceval goeth amidst strange
forests until he cometh to a forest far away, wherein, so it seemed
him, he had never been before. And he passed through a land that
seemed him to have been laid waste, for it was all void of folk. Wild
beast only seeth he there, that ran through the open country. He
entered into a forest in this waste country, and found a hermitage in
the combe of a mountain. He alighted without and heard that the hermit
was singing the service of the dead, and had begun the mass with a
requiem betwixt him and his clerk. He looketh and seeth a pall spread
upon the ground before the altar as though it were over a corpse. He
would not enter the chapel armed, wherefore he hearkened to the mass
from without right reverently, and showed great devotion as he that
loved God much and was a-dread. When the mass was sung, and the hermit
was disarmed of the armour of Our Lord, he cometh to Perceval and
saluteth him and Perceval him again.
"Sir," saith Perceval, "For whom have you done such service? meseemed
that the corpse lay therewithin for whom the service was ordained."
"You say truth," saith the hermit. "I have done it for Lohot, King
Arthur's son, that lieth buried under this pall."
"Who, then, hath slain him?" saith Perceval.
"That will I tell you plainly," saith the hermit.