shall one look for
truth, since Tristan has deceived me? Where look for honour and
uprightness, since the pattern of all honour, Tristan, has lost
them? Whither has virtue fled, since she is gone from Tristan,
who had made her into his shield and defence, yet has now betrayed
me?"

Tristan's eyes, which had been fixed steadily upon Mark, slowly
sink to the ground; a wondering sadness overspreads his countenance,
heavier and heavier as the royal master proceeds with his arraignment.
Why Tristan's innumerable services, the greatness he had won for his
King, if they were to be paid with the receiver's dishonour? Was
it too small a reward that the King had made him his heir? So dearly
he had loved him that, having lost his wife, and being childless, he
had resolved for his sake not to wed again. He had been obdurate
to the prayers of his people, to Tristan's own entreaties, until
Tristan had threatened to leave the kingdom unless he were himself
despatched to bring home a bride for the King. And his courage had
won for Mark this woman, lovely to a wonder, whom who could know,
who behold, who proudly call his own, without accounting himself
blessed? This one, to whom he, Mark, would never have presumed to
aspire, Tristan, braving enemies and danger, had brought home to
him. And now that through such a possession his heart had become
more vulnerable to pain than before, wherefore wound him in the
very spot where it was tenderest?--destroy his faith in his friend,
fill his frank heart with distrust, bring him to the degradation
of dogging his friend by night and listening covertly? "Wherefore
to me this hell which no heaven can deliver me from? Wherefore to
me this indignity which no suffering can wash out? The dreadful,
deep, undiscoverable, thrice-mysterious reason,--who will reveal
it to the world?"

Tristan's eyes, as, thus questioned, he lifts them at last again to
Mark's, express boundless compassion. "Oh! King, I cannot answer;
and that which you ask you never can learn!" No, for it is as strange,
as full of black mystery, to Tristan as to Mark. It is the very
impossible which has happened, the never to be accounted for. Tristan,
the soul of honour, has betrayed his friend, and with all those
circumstances of aggravation which the friend has just counted
off. Nothing can explain it. It is surely like a dream, a curious
dream, the worst of the Day's lies. But in a dream also, as we
remarked before, there is a right